turally sensitive and delicate, the strain has kept her an invalid
altogether.

"Mother, I can't stand Maria," one daughter says to her mother, and
when inquiry is made the mother finds that what her daughter "cannot
stand" is ways that differ from her own. Sometimes, however, they are
very disagreeable ways which are exactly like the ways of the person
who cannot stand them. If one person is imperious and demanding she
will get especially annoyed at another person for being imperious and
demanding, without a suspicion that she is objecting vehemently to a
reflection of herself.

There are two ways in which people get on our nerves. The first way
lies in their difference from us in habit--in little things and in big
things; their habits are not our habits. Their habits may be all right,
and our habits may be all right, but they are "different." Why should
we not be willing to have them different? Is there any reason for it
except the very empty one that we consciously and unconsciously want
every one else to be just like us, or to believe just as we do, or to
behave just as we do? And what sense is there in that?

"I cannot stand Mrs. So-and-so; she gets into a rocking-chair and rocks
and rocks until I feel as if I should go crazy!" some one says. But why
not let Mrs. So-and-so rock? It is her chair while she is in it, and
her rocking. Why need it touch us at all?

"But," I hear a hundred women say, "it gets on our nerves; how can we
help its getting on our nerves?" The answer to that is: "Drop it off
your nerves." I know many women who have tried it and who have
succeeded, and who are now profiting by the relief. Sometimes the
process to such freedom is a long one; sometimes it is a short one;
but, either way, the very effort toward it brings nervous strength, as
well as strength of character.

Take the woman who rocks. Practically every time she rocks you should
relax, actually and consciously relax your muscles and your nerves. The
woman who rocks need not know you are relaxing; it all can be done from
inside. Watch and you will find your muscles strained and tense with
resistance to the rocking. Go to work practically to drop every bit of
strain that you observe. As you drop the grossest strain it will make
you more sensitive to the finer strain and you can drop that--and it is
even possible that you may seek the woman who rocks, in order to
practice on her and get free from the habit of resisting more quickly.