y. Yet you have had no
rest; on the contrary, you have, by continued conscious effort,
consumed more and more of your vital energy_.

[Sidenote: _The Spur of Desire_]

Obviously it was not rest that you needed.

What you required was the impulse of some _strong desire_ that should
carry you over the threshold of that first inertia into the wide field
of reserve energy so rarely called upon and so rich in power.

Under the lashings of necessity, or the spur of love or ambition, men
accomplish feats of mental and physical endurance of which they would
have supposed themselves incapable. Here is what a certain lawyer says
of his early struggles:

[Sidenote: _How to Release Stored-Up Energies_]

"When I was twenty-three years old, married, and with a family to
support, I entered the law course of a great university. Of the many
students in my class, seven, including me, were making a living while
studying law.

"By special arrangement, I was relieved from attendance at lectures
and simply required to pass examinations on the various subjects, and
was thus enabled to retain my place as principal of a large public
school. During the third and last year of my law course, I was
principal of a public day school of two thousand children and an
alternate night school with an enrolment of seven hundred and fifty,
and I worked at the law three nights in the week and all day Sunday.

[Sidenote: _The Lawyer Who "Overworks"_]

"After eight months of this, the final examinations came around. They
consumed a full week--from nine in the morning until five or six at
night. I had no opportunity for review, so I rented a room near the
law school to save the time going and coming and reviewed each night
the subjects of examination for the following day.

"I did not sleep more than two hours any night in that week. On
Thursday, while bolting a bit of luncheon, a fishbone stuck in my
throat. Fearful of losing the result of my year's effort, I returned
to my work, suffering much pain, and kept at it until Saturday night,
when the examinations were concluded. The next day the surgeon who
removed the fishbone said there was no reason why I should not have
had 'a bad case of gangrene.'

"When I look back on that year's work I don't see how I stood it. I
don't see how I kept myself at it, day in, day out, month after month
without rest, recreation or relief. I am sure I could never go through
it again, even if I had the courage to unde