went, and his
features were not at all unusual, but his expression was so full of
quiet interest as to be the greatest contrast to those about him. He
was not thinking his own thoughts either--he was one of the crowd and a
busy, interested observer.
He might have said, "You silly geese, what are you making all this fuss
about, you can do it much better if you will go more easily." If that
was his thought it came from a very kindly sense of humor, and he gave
me a new realization of what it meant, practically, to be in the world
and not of it.
If you are in the world you can live, and observe, and take a much
better part in its workings. If you are of it, you are simply whirled
in an eddy of dust, however you may pose to yourself or to others.
CHAPTER VIII
_The Tired Emphasis_
"I AM so tired, so tired--I go to bed tired, I get up tired, and I am
tired all the time."
How many women--how many hundred women, how many thousand women--say
that to themselves and to others constantly.
It is perfectly true; they are tired all the time; they do go to bed
tired and get up tired and stay tired all day.
If, however, they could only know how very much they increase their
fatigue by their constant mental emphasis of it, and if at the same
time they could turn their wills in the direction of decreasing the
fatigue, instead of emphasizing it, a very large percentage of the
tired feeling could be done away with altogether.
Many women would gladly make more of an effort in the direction of rest
if they knew how, and I propose in this article to give a prescription
for the cure of the tired emphasis which, if followed, will bring happy
results.
When you go to bed at night, no matter how tired you feel, instead of
thinking how tired you are, think how good it is that you can go to bed
to get rested.
It will probably seem absurd to you at first. You may say to yourself:
"How ridiculous, going to bed to get rested, when I have only one short
night to rest in, and one or two weeks in bed would not rest me
thoroughly."
The answer to that is that if you have only one night in which to rest,
you want to make the most of that night, and if you carry the tired
emphasis to bed with you you are really holding on to the tired.
This is as practically true as if you stepped into a bog and then sat
in it and looked forlorn and said. "What a terrible thing it is that I
should be in a bog like this; just think of havi
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