mething to rest from and something to rest for.

Now she does only a normal amount of resting, but gets new life from
every moment of rest she takes; before, all her rest only made her want
more rest and kept her always in the strain of fatigue. And what might
seem to many a very curious result is that as the abnormal desire for
rest disappeared the rushed feeling disappeared, too.

There is no one thing that American women need more than a healthy
habit of rest, but it has got to be real rest, not strained nor
self-indulgent rest.

Another example of this effort at rest which is a sham and a strain is
the woman who insists upon taking a certain time every day in which to
rest. She insists upon doing everything quietly and with--as she
thinks--a sense of leisure, and yet she keeps the whole household in a
sense of turmoil and does not know it. She sits complacently in her
pose of prompt action, quietness and rest, and has a tornado all about
her. She is so deluded in her own idea of herself that she does not
observe the tornado, and yet she has caused it. Everybody in her
household is tired out with her demands, and she herself is ill,
chronically ill. But she thinks she is at peace, and she is annoyed
that others should be tired.

If this woman could open and let out her own interior tornado, which
she has kept frozen in there by her false attitude of restful quiet,
she would be more ill for a time, but it might open her eyes to the
true state of things and enable her to rest to some purpose and to
allow her household to rest, too.

It seems, at first thought, strange that in this country, when the
right habit of rest is so greatly needed, that the strain of rest
should have become in late years one of the greatest defects. On second
thought, however, we see that it is a perfectly rational result. We
have strained to work and strained to play and strained to live for so
long that when the need for rest gets so imperative that we feel we
must rest the habit of strain is so upon us that we strain to rest. And
what does such "rest" amount to? What strength does it bring us? What
enlightenment do we get from it?

With the little lady of whom I first spoke rest was a
steadily-weakening process. She was resting her body straight toward
its grave. When a body rests and rests the circulation gets more and
more sluggish until it breeds disease in the weakest organ, and then
the physicians seem inclined to give their atte