d these are all true. Worry unsettles the mind,
unbalances the judgment, induces fever of the intellect, which
renders calm, cool weighing of matters impossible. No man of great
achievements ever worried during his period of greatness. Had he done
so his greatness could never have been achieved. Imagine a general
trying to solve the vexing problems of a great combat which is going
against him, with his mind beset by numberless worries. He must
concentrate _all his energies_ upon the one thing. If worry occupies
his attention, wit, sense, judgment, discretion, wisdom are crowded
out, have no place.

All the pictures given to us of Grant show him the most imperturbable
at the most trying times. When the fortunes of war seemed most against
him he was the most cheerful, the least disturbed. He had learned the
danger of worry, and compelled it to flee from him, that calm judgment
and clear-headed decisions might be his.

If, therefore, these great ones of earth found it essential to their
well-being to banish worry, how much more is it necessary that we of
the ordinary mass of mankind, of the commoner herd, apply ourselves to
the gaining of the same kind of wisdom.

An old countrywoman once said in my hearing: "Worry, and you hug a
hornet's nest." How suggestive both of the stinging that was sure to
come and the folly, the absurdity, the cruelty to oneself of the act.

The great Scotch philosopher, Blair, said: "Worry (or anxiety) is the
poison of human life," and how true it is. How biting, how corroding,
how destructive to life some poisons are, working speedily, suddenly,
awfully. Others there are that have a cumulative effect, until life
itself cannot bear the strain, and it goes out. Recently I was at a
home where a son was so worried over conditions that he felt ought not
to exist between his parents, that he totally collapsed, mentally,
and for a time was in danger of losing his reason. The folly of his
attitude is apparent to everyone but himself, though he now seeks in
the absorbing occupation of teaching, to free himself from the poison
of worry that was speedily destroying his reason.

Henry Labouchere, the sage who for so many years has edited the London
_Truth_, once wrote a couplet, that is as true as anything he ever
wrote:

They who live in a worry,
Invite death in a hurry.

I want to be ready for death when it comes, but as yet I am not
extending an invitation to the gentleman with the scythe. A