er sharply round a corner, or nearing a
railroad track. If your feet are not pressed forcibly against the floor
of the carriage, the tension will be somewhere else. You are using
nervous force to no earthly purpose, and to great earthly loss. Where
any tension is necessary to make things better, it will assert itself
naturally and more truly as we learn to drop all useless and harmful
tension. Take a patient suffering from nervous prostration for a long
drive, and you will bring him back more nervously prostrated; even the
fresh air will not counteract the strain that comes from not knowing
how to relax to the motion of the carriage.

A large amount of nervous energy is expended unnecessarily while
waiting. If we are obliged to wait for any length of time, it does not
hurry the minutes or bring that for which we wait to keep nervously
strained with impatience; and it does use vital force, and so helps
greatly toward "Americanitis." The strain which comes from an hour's
nervous waiting, when simply to let yourself alone and keep still would
answer much better, is often equal to a day's labor. It must be left to
individuals to discover how this applies in their own especial cases,
and it will be surprising to see not only how great and how common such
strain is, but how comparatively easy it is to drop it. There are of
course exceptional times and states when only constant trying and
thoughtful watchfulness will bring any marked result.

We have taken a few examples where there is nothing to do but keep
quiet, body and brain, from what should be the absolute rest of sleep
to the enforced rest of waiting. Just one word more in connection with
waiting and driving. You must catch a certain train. Not having time to
trust to your legs or the cars, you hastily take a cab. You will in
your anxiety keep up exactly the same strain that you would have had in
walking,--as if you could help the carriage along, or as if reaching
the station in time depended upon your keeping a rigid spine and tense
muscles. You have hired the carriage to take you, and any activity on
your part is quite unnecessary until you reach the station; why not
keep quiet and let the horses do the work, and the driver attend to his
business?

It would be easy to fill a small volume with examples of the way in
which we are walking directly into nervous prostration; examples only
of this one variety of disobedience,--namely, of the laws of _rest._
And to give