shoes that gave her feet room enough the muscles of her feet hurt her
so that she could hardly walk.

Of course, having been cramped into abnormal contraction the process of
expanding to freedom would be painful.

If you had held your fist clenched tight for years, or months, or even
weeks, how it would hurt to open it so that you could have free use of
your fingers.

The same truth holds good with a fist that has been clenched, a foot
that has been pinched, or a brain that has been contracted with
excitement.

The process leading from the abnormal to the normal is always a painful
one. To stay in the abnormal means blindness, constantly limiting power
and death.

To come out into a normal atmosphere and into a normal way of living
means clearer sight, constantly increasing power, and fresh life.

This habit of excitement is not only contracting to the brain; it has
its effect over the whole body. If there is any organ that is weaker
than any other the excitement eventually shows itself. A woman may be
suffering from indigestion, or she may be running up large doctor's
bills because of either one of a dozen other organic disturbances, with
no suspicion that the cause of the whole trouble is that the noisy,
excited, strained habits of her life have robbed her body of the
vitality it needed to keep it in good running order.

As if an engineer threw his coal all over the road and having no fuel
for his engine wondered that it would not run. Stupid women we
are--most of us!

The trouble is that many of us are so deeply immersed in the habit of
excitement that we do not know it.

It is a healthy thing to test ourselves and to really try to find
ourselves out. It is not only healthy; it is deeply interesting.

If quiet of the woods, or, any other quiet place, makes us fidgety, we
may be sure that our own state is abnormal and we had better go into
the woods as often as possible until we feel ourselves to be a part of
the quiet there.

If we go into the woods and get soothed and quieted and then come out
and get fussed up and excited so that we feel painfully the contrast
between the quiet and our every-day life, then we can know that we are
living in the habit of abnormal excitement and we can set to work to
stop it.

"That is all very well," I hear my readers say, "but how are you going
to stop living in abnormal excitement when every circumstance and every
person about you is full of it and knows nothing els