ist cares for his instrument.
It is the music that comes from his violin which he has in mind, and he
is careful of his instrument because of its musical power. So we, with
some sense of the possible power of a healthy body, should be careful
to keep it fully supplied with fresh air; to keep it exercised and
rested; to supply it with the quality and quantity of nourishment it
needs; and to protect it from unnecessary exposure. When, through
mistake or for any other reason, our bodies get out of order, instead
of dwelling on our discomfort, we should take immediate steps to bring
them back to a normal state.

If we learned to do this as a matter of course, as we keep our hands
clean, even though we had to be conscious of our bodies for a short
time while we were gaining the power, the normal care would lead to a
happy unconsciousness. Carlyle says, and very truly, that we are
conscious of no part of our bodies until it is out of order, and it
certainly follows that the habit of keeping our bodies in order would
lead us eventually to a physical freedom which, since our childhood,
few of us have known. In the same way we can take care of our minds
with a wholesome spirit. We can see to it that they are exercised to
apply themselves well, that they are properly diverted, and know how to
change, easily, from one kind of work to another. We can be careful not
to attempt to sleep directly after severe mental work, but first to
refresh our minds by turning our attention into entirely different
channels in the way of exercise or amusement.

We must not allow our minds to be over-fatigued any more than our
bodies, and we must learn how to keep them in a state of quiet
readiness for whatever work or emergency may be before them.

There is also a kind of moral care which is quite in line with the care
of the mind and the body, and which is a very material aid to these,--a
way of refusing to be irritable, of gaining and maintaining
cheerfulness, kindness, and thoughtfulness for others.

It is well known how much the health of any one part of us depends upon
all the others. The theme of one of Howells's novels is the steady
mental, moral, and physical degeneration of a man from eating a piece
of cold mince-pie at midnight, and the sequence of steps by which he is
led down is a very natural process. Indeed, how much irritability and
unkindness might be traced to chronic indigestion, which originally
must have come from some carele