wn.

But we want to remember that there is a radical difference between
indulging another's selfishness, and waiting, with patient yielding,
for him to discover his selfishness himself, and to act unselfishly
from his own free will.

CHAPTER VII

_Quiet vs. Chronic Excitement_

SOME women live in a chronic state of excitement all the time and they
do not find it out until they get ill. Even then they do not always
find it out, and then they get more ill.

It is really much the same with excitable women as with a man who
thinks he must always keep a little stimulant in himself in order to
keep about his work. When a bad habit is established in us we feel
unnatural if we give the habit up for a moment--and we feel natural
when we are in it--but it is poison all the same.

If a woman has a habit of constantly snuffing or clearing her throat,
or rocking a rocking chair, or chattering to whoever may be near her
she would feel unnatural and weird if she were suddenly wrenched out of
any of these things. And yet the poisoning process goes on just the
same.

When it seems immaterial to us that we should be natural we are in a
pretty bad way and the worst of it is we do not know it.

I once took a friend with me into the country who was one of those
women who lived on excitement in every-day life. When she dressed in
the morning she dressed in excitement. She went down to breakfast in
excitement. She went about the most humdrum everyday affairs excited.
Every event in life--little or big--was an excitement to her--and she
went to bed tired out with excitement--over nothing.

We went deep in the woods and in the mountains, full of great powerful
quiet.

When my friend first got there she was excited about her arrival, she
was excited about the house and the people in it, but in the middle of
the night she jumped up in bed with a groan of torture.

I thought she had been suddenly taken ill and started up quickly from
my end of the room to see what was the trouble.

"Oh, oh," she groaned, "the quiet! It is so quiet!" Her brain which had
been in a whirl of petty excitement felt keen pain when the normal
quiet touched it.

Fortunately this woman had common sense and I could gradually explain
the truth to her, and she acted upon it and got rested and strong and
quiet.

I knew another woman who had been wearing shoes that were too tight for
her and that pinched her toes all together. The first time she wore