ed close to the
transmitter, it may relieve us from nervous strain; for nerves always
relax with the voice.

Or the telephone may be the means of making us more selfish and
self-centered, more undecided and diffuse, more impatient, more
strained and nervous.

In fact, the telephones may help us toward health or illness. We might
even say the telephone may lead us toward heaven or toward hell. We
have our choice of roads in the way we use it.

It is a blessed convenience and if it proves a curse--we bring the
curse upon our own heads.

I speak of course only of the public who use the telephone. Those who
serve the public in the use of the telephone must have many trials to
meet, and, I dare say, are not always courteous and patient. But
certainly there can be no case of lagging or discourtesy on the part of
a telephone operator that is not promptly rectified by a quiet, decided
appeal to the "desk."

It is invariably the nervous strain and the anger that makes the
trouble.

There may be one of these days a school for the better use of the
telephone; but such a school never need be established if every
intelligent man and woman will be his and her own school in
appreciating and acting upon the power gained if they compel themselves
to go with science--and never allow themselves to go against it.

CHAPTER XV

_Don't Talk_

THERE is more nervous energy wasted, more nervous strain generated,
more real physical harm done by superfluous talking than any one knows,
or than any one could possibly believe who had not studied it. I am not
considering the harm done by what people say. We all know the
disastrous effects that follow a careless or malicious use of the
tongue. That is another question. I simply write of the physical power
used up and wasted by mere superfluous words, by using one hundred
words where ten will do--or one thousand words where none at all were
needed.

I once had been listening to a friend chatter, chatter, chatter to no
end for an hour or more, when the idea occurred to me to tell her of an
experiment I had tried by which my voice came more easily. When I could
get an opportunity to speak, I asked her if she had ever tried taking a
long breath and speaking as she let the breath out. I had to insist a
little to keep her mind on the suggestion at all, but finally
succeeded. She took a long breath and then stopped.

There was perhaps for half a minute a blessed silence, and then what