ughout the day.

The more tired we are, the more we need to minimize our fatigue by the
intelligent use of our own wills.

Who cares for a game that is simple and easy? Who cares for a game when
you beat as a matter of course, and without any effort on your part at
all?

Whoever cares for games at all cares most for good, stiff ones, where,
when you have beaten, you can feel that you have really accomplished
something; and when you have not beaten, you have at least learned
points that will enable you to beat the next time, or the next to the
next time--or sometime. And everyone who really loves a game wants to
stick to it until he has conquered and is proficient.

Why not wake up, and realize that same interest and courage in this
biggest game of all--this game of life?

We must play it!

Few of us are cowards enough to put ourselves out of it. Unless we play
it and obey the rules we do not really play at all.

Many of us do not know the rules, but it is our place to look about and
find them out.

Many more of us think that we can play the game better if we make up
rules of our own, and leave out whatever regular rules we do know, that
do not suit our convenience.

But that never works.

It only sometimes seems to work; and although plain common sense shows
us over and over that the game played according to our own ideas
amounts to nothing, it is strange to see how many work and push to play
the game in their own way instead of in the game's way.

It is strange to see how many shove blindly in this direction, and that
direction, to cut their way through a jungle, when there is the path
just by them, if they will take it.

Most of us do not know our own power because we would rather stay in a
ditch and complain.

Strength begets strength, and we can only find our greater power, by
using intelligently, and steadily, the power we have.

CHAPTER IX

_How to be Ill and get Well_

ILLNESS seems to be one of the hardest things to happen to a busy
woman. Especially hard is it when a woman must live from hand to mouth,
and so much illness means, almost literally, so much less food.

Sometimes one is taken so suddenly and seriously ill that it is
impossible to think of whether one has food and shelter or not; one
must just be taken care of or die. It does not seem to matter which at
the time.

Then another must meet the difficulty. It is the little nagging
illnesses that make the trouble--just en