She lays eggs to the extent of three hundred million dollars per year, in this country alone. If we combine her egg yield with her chicken industry we find her harvest yields the enormous sum of six hundred and twenty million dollars per year.

We are precisely what we deserve to be: we fit for what we are fitted for. Weaklings are sent to the rear, fighters are always in front.

The young wife may resolve to win; it depends upon how she begins to mold herself for larger possibilities. If she cannot succeed in small things she will not fit when the task is bigger. Suppose you resolve to be considerate and agreeable to every soul you meet for one month. For one month you will subject yourself to a rigid test, you will be considerate and agreeable, no matter what the conditions are or the provocation may be to break your word.

It is a fact that most failures are directly attributable to laziness rather than to lack of ability or poor health, or any other cause. It is the most difficult thing in the world for some people to exert themselves to "make the effort" to succeed. They just do enough to "hold their job" or to earn a living, though the possibilities around them are rich in promise. Many know what they ought to do, but they don't seem to be able to do it. Their ambition is lacking; they elect to travel the road to failure.

If the young wife resolves to be considerate and agreeable for one month, she is the right kind of young wife. The right impulse is working within her. The very fact that she makes the resolve proves this. Most people are influenced by two motives, necessity and pleasure. They work because they have to work to exist. But a great deal of the work is indifferently done. The woman who skims over her household duties in a disinterested and frequently slovenly way, will spend much thought and a great amount of time to excel in appearance and in attaining results at a church fair, for example; or she will work a.s.siduously sewing every afternoon and evening on dresses, etc., to shine during a two weeks'

vacation at the sea sh.o.r.e, while her husband is being indifferently fed and her home all but neglected. To attain pleasure one will actually work efficiently though the method and the motive may be ethically wrong. So, when a young wife actually resolves to do something which has a high moral significance and which she is not compelled to do she is being actuated by the right kind of principle, she is following the law or instinct of success.

THE FORMULA OF SUCCESS.--Successful men and women are frequently asked to give their formula of success. There is no formula of success except hard work. Every successful man or woman is a hard worker. There is no exception to this rule. We often personally know of men or women who "rise in the world" and sometimes we look upon them as lucky dogs, and wonder why fortune does not favor us. If we a.n.a.lyze the daily life of these seemingly lucky individuals we will find that they plan and work and scheme while you and I play and amuse ourselves. They have a certain system which they adhere to under all circ.u.mstances. They have worked hard so long that it has become a habit,--a habit that brings happiness and success. All of them have had their ups and downs, their worries and battles, but they have faced them in the front ranks, they have never become discouraged, they have been inspired and impelled by the conviction that some day the tide of battle would change. On that day they were determined to be ready and willing to take advantage of the turn of the wheel of fortune.

Study the work of the next successful man or woman you meet, and see if the rule does not hold true. It isn't the kind of energy that is generated that makes the distinction between success and failure: it is the way in which the energy is used. To win means concentration of energy; let the energy be dissipated over many things and failure becomes a certainty. There isn't a really successful man or woman in existence who does not deserve success, and who has not worked hard for it.

Success, fame, and the efforts of friends may not give us the happiness which we yearn for, but there is one thing that will always steer us safely into port--one thing that will bring us the blessing of happiness though all things else fail us--and that is hard work.

WHEN FORTUNE KNOCKS.--Fortune is said to knock at the door of every man once in a lifetime. That once is all the time, for the truth is that fortune is knocking at our doors every day. The trouble is that we are not prepared to take advantage of her importuning habits. Fortune has her laws, and we cannot enter her chariot except by obeying these laws.

The young wife who resolves to be considerate and agreeable for one month is obeying one of her laws, because, if she keeps her promise, she will have learnt more than she ever did in any preceding month of her experience. She will find, for example, that people are really more amiable and agreeable than she ever thought they were; that, because of the restraint she is exerting on her temper and self-control, she is growing stronger temperamentally. She has more patience, and she is more thorough in little things; her environment is enlarging and life is more interesting. The month's experience will teach her something of her own capabilities and resources, and she will be so interested and encouraged that she will determine to experiment more and in other directions. She is experiencing the psychology of character building--the most fascinating study of that most fascinating riddle, human nature. Fortune always favors the brave--it will favor her because she is working in the right direction--she is obeying the law of success.

To resolve is to obey--to know what you want, to desire to succeed, to be willing to sacrifice self, to attain results, to smile at adversity, to be patient, truthful, honest, unselfish, sympathetic, in short to work hard every minute and all the time.

CHAPTER XXVI

"Habit is a cable: we weave a thread of it each day, and it becomes so strong we cannot break it."

HORACE MANN.

SPARE MOMENTS

The Study Habit--The Germ of Self-culture--Millions of Tiny Cells in Our Brain--The Economic Value of the Study Habit--Two Ways of Gaining Knowledge--Happiness in the Company of Those Striving for Higher Ideals--A Young Wife's Incentive to Self-culture--The Difference Between Moral and Mental Disloyalty--The Study Habit Creates Its Own Interest--Nosophobia, or the Dread of Disease--Keep Still and Be Well.

THE STUDY HABIT.--Every individual differs from every other individual according to his habits. The nature of our habits fixes our status in the struggle of life. If we get into the habit of thinking evil thoughts, we live in that atmosphere. Health is a habit, so also is success. Honesty, virtue, vice, procrastination, contentment, fault-finding, grumbling, candy eating, gossiping, drinking, sleeping, religion, friends, life itself, are habits. Life is what we make it. "As the man thinketh in his heart, so he is." Some habits are good, others are bad. Certain habits are constructive, others are destructive. If we get into the habit of doing our work thoroughly and regularly, according to some definite system, we encourage the habits of contentment, calmness, efficiency, and happiness. If we do our work spasmodically, irregularly, without system, if we gossip between times, we are eternally trying to catch up, so we encourage the habits of procrastination, discontent, inefficiency, fault-finding, and failure.

We must be master or victim of our habits. We must succeed, or we must fail. The immutable law of life permits of no standing still. We are either progressing or we are retrogressing. One of the best habits, if not the very best, that the young wife can cultivate in her new home is the study habit. It is eminently a constructive habit.

The germ of self-culture is latent in every healthy mind. It is an exceedingly virile microbe. It may begin as a fad but intrinsically it grows as a virtue. Environment may give it birth but its roots may not be circ.u.mscribed. They seek nourishment from every far and near spring and well, and its branches spread out to the north and south, and east and west, and its leaves suck into its heart, health and strength and color and fragrance, from the everlasting sun.

In our brain are millions of tiny cells. Each cell is capable of a single thought. When we begin as children, we learn letters first, then words, then sentences or thoughts. In due time we have a sufficient number of cells, each with its photographed letter or word or thought.

From this stock we reason and think and plan. These are the letters and words and thoughts of ordinary life. We have millions of cells left, and the brain is a tireless, ceaseless worker. If we keep on feeding it more letters, more words, more thoughts, it is satisfied, but if we stop, if we stagnate, it keeps on working, but it can only use the words and thoughts we have given it. Ceaselessly it rearranges these words in its effort to live. We are feeding it nothing, its circulation becomes poor, its vitality weak. Some day it arranges its limited number of words into a new thought, a bad thought, our idle mind grasps the significance of the new thought, and we give birth to a new piece of scandal, or we commit a crime. The brain is pleased, because the execution of the new bad impulse brought more blood, more vitality to it, and it gets the habit of thinking bad thoughts and conveying evil impulses. They were the product of idleness of mind. And as a matter of statistical fact, all tragedies, crimes, vices, scandal, gossip and misery are direct products of mental inertness or idleness.

The minds of the grumbler, the gossip, the thief, the criminal, are poor, empty, starved, wayward minds, and their brains are small, poorly nourished, sickly brains. The young wife with a moment of leisure who has a starved, empty mind, is a victim of her pa.s.sions, her surroundings and her ungoverned impulses. The young wife whose brain is being fed by the study habit, is self-contained, is master of her impulses and her pa.s.sions. The mental lat.i.tude of one is limited to caprice, envy, discontent, hate and jealousy; the other is light-hearted, charitable, just, contented, and happy.

Shut the two in a dungeon and the owner of the starved, empty brain will go mad. The other will find hope in her heart, and in her brain, the children of her thoughts will troop in, bringing solace and cheer and courage.

From a practical standpoint the study habit has an economic value. It preserves health and peace of mind, it enhances efficiency, it broadens our sympathies and charities, and it unifies the home circle. It is an easy habit to acquire, and it sustains its interest: it is inexpensive.

The Carnegie libraries, correspondence schools, the university extension plan of lectures, etc., contribute in a large measure to its easy acquirement, and to the success with which it may be pursued.

TWO WAYS OF GAINING KNOWLEDGE.--We gain knowledge in two ways. First, by experience, which means mingling with people, exchanging ideas, discussing topics, listening to lectures, sermons, talks, etc. Second, by reading and studying. We must read and study in order to really understand and a.s.similate what we learn from experience, and what we hear discussed in lectures, sermons and talks. As soon as we become interested in a study we begin to rise above what we may call the everyday plane. We desire to know more, and when we know a good deal about one subject, we want to know something about kindred subjects, so we extend the lat.i.tude of our knowledge. It is marvelous how the habit grows. It is not work, it is pleasure. We long for spare moments to renew the study, and as we experience the pleasure the growth of our mind affords, we improve in all directions. Every cell in the brain sends out vibrant impulses, new life, new hope. Health means more, life has a meaning. We find happiness in the company of those who are striving for higher ideals. We perform even our menial tasks with more care and with more interest, because we grasp their true meaning, and we know that we cannot aspire to higher ideals if we are dishonest in little things. So the study habit makes better men and better women of us, and it adds to the pleasure of life all the real pleasure there is in living. The power to a.n.a.lyze, to conceive, and to create are the highest pleasures mankind possesses, and they can only be attained in any degree by education and cultivation.

It is not easy to explain to the average superficially educated person the satisfaction to be derived from original or creative thinking. One must progress far enough in mental self-culture before it becomes a pleasure, almost an intoxication. Up to a certain point the acquirement of knowledge is a task, an effort, a seeming self-sacrifice; beyond that point it is a labor of love, a pleasure, a consecration. The crude, discordant efforts of a child, when it first begins to acquire a musical education, very convincingly ill.u.s.trates the condition of mind of the beginner in self-culture. The task is a toil and the results do not stimulate further spontaneous effort. The same child, however, may successfully pa.s.s through the various gradations of a musical career and arrive at a time when effort will submerge itself; when the result of the knowledge acquired will be so gratifying that it will no longer be a toil; when the study will be pursued because of the actual pleasure it affords.

The only worthwhile thing in life is mind. If one does not develop the mind, it is possible to live an entire lifetime and not really live at all. To exist is not to live. All the amenities of life contribute to existence, not to life itself. To live is to create, to give, to endow.

If a book contains one original thought, it will live. Few books contain more than one thought, one inspiration. If it, however, suffuses that one thought into the hearts of men its existence will have been justified. We have no criterion or standard by which to judge the ethical value of a thought. If a thought conveys an inspiration to another and is productive of moral growth it has life and value because it creates.

To exist is to blindly follow the primal instincts. To live is to think, to reason, to grow mentally. Consequently we must have ideals, we must cling tenaciously to these ideals, and, "We must know what we want."

THE YOUNG WIFE'S INCENTIVE TO SELF-CULTURE.--A young wife has a real incentive to self-culture if she hopes to maintain her position in the home and in the affection of her husband. A man has always the advantage of being actively engaged in one of the two ways of acquiring knowledge.

He mingles with people. He gains considerable knowledge and frequently cultivation unwittingly. He grows with his business, and as it increases he becomes more important in the community. He mingles with keener, wide-awake business men, his wits are sharpened, his brain must be alert and virile. A healthy active brain grows, it is responsive, it absorbs knowledge. As he climbs higher, he wears off the crude corners and a.s.sumes a worldly cultivation, which men of sound business sense can adapt to suit any social exigency. The wife does not have these advantages, and, unless she appreciates this point, she is very apt to remain where she was when she married, so far as mental culture is concerned. Now to be wife in a true sense, she must be companion. She must keep pace with his prosperity on the one hand and with his intelligence on the other. The more culture and knowledge a man attains the more critical he becomes, the more cultivated his tastes, the more cultivation he demands. Qualities that did not always grate upon his sensibilities become acutely objectionable in his higher mental state. A man may be loyal at heart, but he resents the inapt.i.tude of a wife who fails to keep the mental pace. He is willing to give his wife the benefits of his material prosperity, but he cannot give her the finer evidences of his higher mentality, because, while she may have proved true as a wife, she failed as a companion. She fell behind in culture.

He cannot give that which she cannot receive. The young wife should appreciate the difference between moral disloyalty on the part of her husband, and mental disloyalty. He is the transgressor in the first, and she is the culprit in the second delinquency. We must meet a situation as it exists. Moralizing does not change the conditions. A man and woman may be temperamentally suited to each other to-day, and in a few years may be wholly dissimilar in tastes. If being a wife simply implied more loyalty and domestic efficiency there could be no just cause for complaint if she failed in every other respect, but it does not. To be a wife more than in name, one must be friend, companion, confidant. No one, much less a husband, selects as a friend, companion, and confidant, an individual whose tastes are not in sympathy with his own, who does not understand the viewpoint, one in whom he cannot confide, or one whose intelligence is crude. A man can obtain a housekeeper anywhere, but he cannot buy a home-maker, a companion, a friend, or a confidant.

The study habit will create the interest. If you once get it, only death can take it from you. If you become interested, no man can grow away from you, and no man can take from you the worlds it will open up. You must, however, begin the study habit with the determination to acquire knowledge. You must want intensely to succeed, and you must be willing to sacrifice self, and to work diligently. "If you quit, it simply shows you did not want an education, you only thought you did,--you are not willing to pay the price."

NOSOPHOBIA, OR THE DREAD OF DISEASE.--There is one disease I would warn the young wife not to acquire. It is called nosophobia. It is without doubt the most serious sickness with which any member of the human family may be afflicted.

In another part of this book I have written the story of the aged philosopher, who, on being asked to name the worst troubles he had in life, answered, "I am quite sure my greatest worries, and my worst troubles were those that never happened." This reply is well worth thinking about; it contains matter for serious reflection, and what makes it so suggestive and valuable is that it can be proved true by the experience of our own lives.

Nosophobia means dread of disease. It may astonish many to know that such a condition is regarded as a disease, and that it has been given a name. Instead, however, of it being a rare disease, or an unusual condition, we find it is one of the commonest diseases, and one of the most easily acquired conditions. In fact, it is so easily acquired nowadays that we have to be constantly on guard against it. Though we may not be its victim, we have all felt its influence at some time, and even one experience of it is sufficient to satisfy the most exacting. It is an absolute medical fact, that the dread of disease will render one more profoundly miserable and unhappy, and will cause more mental and physical incompetents than will any severe, prolonged, actual sickness.

People who are victims of nosophobia are probably the most miserable and wretched individuals on earth. This is essentially so because of the peculiar characteristics of the disease. It is an insinuating and insidious ailment and its progress is c.u.mulative. When we begin to worry about our health the germ of nosophobia takes up its habitation in our midst and we never know another happy moment.

The dread of disease is probably more common now than it used to be, partly because people know more about it, and, therefore, have more material out of which to manufacture dreads, and partly because a large number of people have the leisure to worry about various symptoms and sensations that come to them, and the significance of which they exaggerate by dwelling on them until they become positive torments. It is particularly those who have not much to do, and, above all, those who have absolutely nothing to do who suffer most from the affection.

Children never suffer from this malady because pains and aches have no significance to them. The probability of death through sickness never bothers them. Their minds are always occupied. They are always busy, they think only of life and of living. As we grow older, however, we become introspective and we permit conditions to favor the development of a wrong mental att.i.tude. We accentuate the seriousness of each trifling pain and illness, and the specter of death looms up in the path of each ailment. Soon we spend needless time in worry and we imagine we are not as healthy as we ought to be and that we may probably die in the near future. This affects our temperament and our efficiency. Life is no longer tolerable or attractive, and we shortly are numbered with the failures and the incompetents.

One of the unfortunate consequences of nosophobia is that a victim of it not only renders her own life miserable, but she unfortunately affects the happiness of every member of the household. She is as a rule gloomy and morose, and this constant depressive environment is not conducive to the success of any effort toward creating moments of amus.e.m.e.nt and happiness. Her presence acts as a deterrent and repeated failures to overcome this domestic cloud finally result in a complete cessation of all effort. Things fall into a rut and each member of the family seek their various forms of diversion outside the home circle.

These individuals are sometimes spoken of as "trouble seekers." In a sense, the term is appropriate, because the troubles which wreck their peace of mind never occur. In the beginning there is usually some slight physical ailment. As a rule, it is some form of nervous indigestion.

Under appropriate and adequate treatment such forms of indigestion are readily curable in ordinary individuals, but these patients are not ordinary individuals. They are perverse and opinionated. They have their own ideas. It is impossible to convince them that they are not as sick as they imagine. They think the physician fails to quite comprehend their cases,--that he does not recognize the serious side of the ailment, and so they are never wholly satisfied with medical a.s.sistance.

The little incidental pains of the indigestion are indications of heart disease to such a patient and she acts in sympathy with this awful affliction; the real explanation being that the gas produced by the indigestion bothers the heart for the time being. She is very apt to diet as a consequence, one article after another being avoided until she is living on a starvation diet. She fails to appreciate the fact that she needs more nourishment, not less; that her stomach is in good condition, the fault being with her nerves. She finally becomes anemic and neurasthenic and a misanthrope.

The young wife can readily appreciate that, to expect domestic success and happiness under such circ.u.mstances, would be impossible. Yet there are young wives who develop this habit of accentuating their little pains and ailments inordinately, to their husbands, on every occasion.

They adopt this dangerous means of exciting extra sympathy and caressing. Some do it in explanation of their failure to perform their household duties efficiently--a laziness plea pure and simple.

These inefficient and tricky little ladies find that it is easy to impose upon their unsuspecting husbands, so they proceed to work out the details to their own satisfaction. After spending the day sight-seeing or shopping or gossiping, and having neglected their work and feeling tired, they a.s.sume a becomingly abandoned position on the big, new, comfortable couch, practice a few heartbreaking sighs and experiment with the tear supply. These details are arranged and timed to be effective just as Jack opens the hall door with the latchkey. We can picture what follows without making any effort to dramatize the incident. But if the reader will try to create mental pictures of the frequently recurring home-comings under the same circ.u.mstances, she will develop interesting studies in domestic psychology as she watches the effect upon Jack when the truth begins to dawn upon him.

It needs no oracle to a.s.sure these women that they are traveling along a road that has only one ending. Love is as old as the hills, and the older it gets, like the wise old hills, a wiser old love it becomes. It exacts its price, and its price is an equal love. There never was a love born--except maternal love--that will sustain itself after the knowledge dawns upon it that it is being bartered away and imposed upon. The day of reckoning comes in time and the dream is over.

Do not forget that the first year of married life is the trial year--the real test of your soul-merit. During that first year you carve, as it were, on a monument, in a thousand different ways, the ineffaceable record of whether you deserve success and happiness in the struggle of life. In what should be the after-glow of love's young dream--the first precious weeks and months as a young wife--no element will be more subtly dangerous than the art of duplicity. Before a young wife determines to practice deception she should fully appreciate the inevitable consequences. If, under the mistaken idea that she can easily deceive her husband, because "he trusts me so," she believes she may continue to do so with impunity, she is the most elementary of all silly little fools. She has failed to observe that the great law of the universe acts in the interest of the rich and poor, the fool and the philosopher alike. She will become too clever and like all fools and criminals she will give herself away. She will wake up to find that she has been playing with the sacred things of earth--home and a husband's love; that, never again can she reestablish the affection and confidence which she has trampled upon and defiled; that the future is a mortgaged hope and she herself an unclean and unworthy thing.

Practicing the art of duplicity in simulating physical ailments will, if persisted in, establish nosophobia. The patient will come to believe that she is not exactly well. She will establish the habit of feeling sick. This will render her mind diseased and the diseased mind will in turn suggest new and additional aches and pains, and she will soon not know whether she is sick or well. The dread of disease will effect its retribution and soon she will be, in fact, an unhappy and an unsuccessful young wife.

Modern conditions unfortunately favor the easy development of nosophobia in young wives. Our larger knowledge of the symptoms of diseased conditions tends to render the a.n.a.lysis of localized pain more definitely and more suggestively. Certain pains, we are told by hearsay busybodies, mean certain serious conditions, and the category of these diseases extends from indigestion to consumption and to cancer. To the victim of nosophobia this suggestive knowledge is a constant terror and an ever present nightmare. To the normal healthy mind they mean nothing and suggest less.

The modern young housewife has a superabundance of spare time. The utilization of the young wife's spare time is of the most momentous importance as we have previously pointed out. It is the one commodity which will speak in the after years in words of solace and cheer or in regret and condemnation--according to how these precious moments are spent. If these moments are not spent in a way best fitted to wholly occupy the mind, the mental att.i.tude--to which we previously referred, and which is conducive to the cultivation of nosophobia--will have been developed.

There are certain kindred conditions that may partly explain, to the ordinary healthy person, the real distress of mind into which these self-centered sufferers sink. The fear of a thunder storm, for example, creates profound dread and distress of mind in some people. The dread of dirt, of sharp instruments, of certain insects and animals, of darkness, of an ocean voyage, and of great heights, are common examples of this type of mind-distress of which the characteristic symptom is an inexplicable and uncontrollable dread. The same system of self-discipline and self-control is necessary to effect a cure of these various forms of mind-distress as is necessary in the successful treatment of dread of disease. To none of these other forms, however, is attached the same degree of seriousness by the laity as they attach unjustly to nosophobia. The conditions are all the same, but they reason that the dread of darkness or dirt or mice or height cannot possibly bring death or seriously affect the health or happiness, while sickness and the dread of it, means--so they imagine--pain and maybe death.

Medically, nosophobia has no such significance. The condition exists only in the mind and the same effort at self-discipline will cure the dread of disease as well as the dread of any other possible condition.