ssed
on every hand and the vivid pictures which come from reading the
newspapers. Their minds (as in the case of yellow fever) become full
of images of the disease, of its symptoms--black vomit, delirium,--and
of death, mourning, and funerals.
If you never accomplish anything else in life, get rid of worry. There
are no greater enemies of harmony than little anxieties and petty
cares. Do not flies aggravate a nervous horse more than his work? Do
not little naggings, constantly touching him with the whip, or jerking
at the reins, fret and worry him much more than the labor of drawing
the carriage?
It is the little pin-pricks, the petty annoyances of our everyday life,
that mar our comfort and happiness and rob us of more strength than the
great troubles which we nerve ourselves to meet. It is the perpetual
scolding and fault-finding of an irritable man or woman which ruins the
entire peace and happiness of many a home.
The most deplorable waste of energy in human life is caused by the
fatal habit of anticipating evil, of fearing what the future has in
store for us, and under no circumstances can the fear or worry be
justified by the situation, for it is always an imaginary one, utterly
groundless and without foundation.
What we fear is invariably something that has not yet happened. It
does not exist; hence is not a reality. If you are actually suffering
from a disease you have feared, then fear only aggravates every painful
feature of your illness and makes its fatal issue more probable.
The fear habit shortens life, for it impairs all the physiological
processes. Its power is shown by the fact that it actually changes the
chemical composition of the secretions of the body. Fear victims not
only age prematurely but they also die prematurely. All work done when
one is suffering from a sense of fear or foreboding has little
efficiency. Fear strangles originality, daring, boldness; it kills
individuality, and weakens all the mental processes. Great things are
never done under a sense of fear of some impending danger. Fear always
indicates weakness, the presence of cowardice. What a slaughterer of
years, what a sacrificer of happiness and ambitions, what a miner of
careers this monster has been! The Bible says, "A broken spirit drieth
the bones." It is well known that mental depression--melancholy--will
check very materially the glandular secretions of the body and
literally dry up the tissues.
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