The ability to take a nervous sufferer's point of view is greatly
needed. There can be no doubt that with that effort on the part of
friends and relatives, many cases of severe nervous prostration
might be saved, certainly much nervous suffering could be prevented.

A woman who is suffering from a nervous conscience writes a note
which shows that she is worrying over this or that supposed mistake,
or as to what your attitude is towards her. A prompt, kind, and
direct answer will save her at once from further nervous suffering
of that sort. To keep an anxious person, whether he be sick or well,
watching the mails, is a want of sympathy which is also shown in
many other ways, unimportant, perhaps, to us, but important if we
are broad enough to take the other's point of view.

There are many foolish little troubles from which men and women
suffer that come only from tired nerves. A wise patience with such
anxieties will help greatly towards removing their cause. A wise
patience is not indulgence. An elaborate nervous letter of great
length is better answered by a short but very kind note.

The sympathy which enables us to understand the point of view of
tired nerves gives us the power to be lovingly brief in our response
to them, and at the same time more satisfying than if we responded
at length.

Most of us take human nature as a great whole, and judge individuals
from our idea in general. Or, worse, we judge it all from our own
personal prejudices. There is a grossness about this which we wonder
at not having seen before, when we compare the finer sensitiveness
which is surely developed by the steady effort to understand
another's point of view. We know a whole more perfectly as a whole
if we have a distinct knowledge of the component parts. We can only
understand human nature en masse through a daily clearer knowledge
of and sympathy with its individuals. Every one of us knows the
happiness of having at least one friend whom he is perfectly sure
will neither undervalue him nor give him undeserved praise, and
whose friendship and help he can count upon, no matter how great a
wrong he has done, as securely as he could count upon his loving
thought and attention in physical illness. Surely it is possible for
each of us to approach such friendship in our feeling and attitude
towards every one who comes in touch with us.

It is comparatively easy to think of this open sympathy, or even
practise it in big ways; it