was because he was allowed to have such a fear, or, quite as likely, because the parents carelessly or deliberately planted fear in his infant mind.

After birth and bringing up, after the facts of heredity, childhood and youth comes adult life-the life of man and woman. But they are as children still, mutable, mobile, imperfect always, swayed by a thousand influences, slaves to countless circumstances. How shall they manage not to be nervous? By proper living; proper working and playing, eating, drinking and sleeping; above all, proper thinking and feeling.

Labor may have been a calamity to Adam and Eve. Nowadays it is no curse, but the bright particular star of health and happiness. To have a wholesome ambition and to work with enthusiasm for its fulfilment, these form the very essence of a vigorous existence. Fortunately, man is now so constituted that to work and work with an object, is a function necessary for his completeness. To cross this dictum of Nature is to suffer-physically, mentally or morally, in many instances nervously. Many an invalid would be well to-day if he had a worthy purpose in life and happily labored for it. Many a hysterical woman would be stable and strong had she consistently striven with singleness of aim for a laudable object. The purposeless idler is ever a weakling in unstable equilibrium, upset by every vagrant mood.

To say that overwork is not a very frequent cause of nervousness is frankly to enter the ranks of heterodoxy, but my experience is that work, hard work, is wholesome. To work hard is to get tired; to work too hard is to get too tired; but I seldom see the familiar spectacle of nervous breakdown due to work alone. It is the unwisdom that goes with the work. It is worry, the strain of doubt, the wear of ungratified ambition, the depression of failure or the passionate play of other emotions that makes the nervous wreck.

Though man's nature demands work for his development and equipoise, it none the less needs play. Long before the birth of physiology it was known that the greatest efficiency of any living tissue was attained by alternating activity and rest. The cycle of the seasons, the night following the day, the succession of blossom, fruitage and quiescence, the universality of holidays, are so familiar as to cause no thought, but all life is

attuned to this wonderful rhythm of action and repose. Even the busy heart that never ceases throbbing day or night from birth to death, so beats that every contraction is followed by a period of rest almost twice as long. That is, a healthy heart works only about one-third of the time. What is a good law for the heart is not a bad rule for the brain, but for this complex creature called man, something more than mere rest is necessary. Besides relaxation, we must have diversion, amusement, fun, if you please. We must play if our work is to be effective and long sustained aud if we are not to be nervous.

The advisability of reasonable eating, the pernicious effects of alcohol on the nervous system and the havoc wrought by drug habits are so universally recognized as to need no mention. With respect to diet, however, I cannot refrain from noting one bad habit that has seemed to me to be very frequent in nervous people and to contribute materially to their troubles. I mean the starvation habit-the obsession, born of poor doctors or officious friends that makes the victim eschew one article of food after another until he is trying to exist on Fakem's nularine and Buncombe's cereal.

Of all nervous sedatives and tranquilizers of mankind none equals "tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep." Sancho Panza truly said, "it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty," and, as a matter of fact, we know that one can live without sleep just about as long as he can liye without food. Children should be encouraged to sleep, young people should be made to sleep and the nervous person should be taught to sleep. The sins of parents who carelessly or designedly shorten the children's sleep hours is only equaled by the folly of grownups who deny themselves sleep for the sake of business or pleasure. Alarm clocks are an abomination unto the brain and an evidence of hygienic evil.

A deal of nervouness is caused or helped along by misdirected energy, misplaced worry, longing for baubles, the fighting of phantoms. To recognize the really important things in life is one of the most difficult tasks of judgment that come to the individual. Having settled on the essentials, it is perhaps equally difficult to ignore all else. This is certain; the man or woman who can early reach a wise decision in the matter and then steadily follow the tenor of this decision could not be

nervous, even with the aid of ancestors and the connivance of parents. Fretting over non-essentials, striving for objects not worth the having, fright at empty forms, looking inward at little self instead of outward at the greatness of creationthese are the follies that keep us nervous. And closely allied to them is the nervouness of indecision-the demon of reconsideration. How many thousands of people have worn themselves to nervous shreds by turning over and over the same problem, reaching again and again the same conclusion. It is well worth while to acquire a habit of prompt and definite decision. To allow one's self to reopen settled questions begets a habit of doubting one's ability, or even reliabilty, pernicious in the

extreme.

If to define for one's self the really great and valuable is important, equally so is the determination of one's own place and one's own value. Realization of the fact that the individual is merely a minute item in a limitless cosmos, at most a not very important integer in a complex society, should be the first step toward a rational adjustment of values on which must rest that serene placidity which is the antithesis of nervousness. To be plainer still, the person who is brought up, or brings himself up to feel that he is of paramount importance; that his feelings, wishes and opinions are always entitled to prompt consideration, is on the very highway to nervousness. He is doomed to much disappointment; many rude shocks to his sensibilities breed a gnawing bitterness of spirit; he naturally gravitates into the neuropathic vice of introspection. To develop the conception that he is pecularly constituted; that he is a wonderfully unique organization of finer mechanism than his fellow-mortals, is continuously calamitous for any one. As a matter of fact, one man's stomachache is much like another man's colic, one woman's aversions about as strong as another woman's autipathies, A's grief as keen as B's sorrow. The perfectly normal individual carries as part of his innermost consciousness the knowledge that pain, tears and troubles come to all, and that what has been borne by man for countless ages, can be endured again. Such knowledge, too, must in part form the natural base of true altruism and effective ethics. That lofty ethics should constitute a goodly plate in the armor against nervousness, is seldom mentioned, but prac

tical experience has time and again taught me that sincere love of truth, justice and self-control is a mighty help in the fight against nervous instability. Of particular value are a clear appreciation and uniform practice of the exact truth. They are the best protection against nervous trouble, whose essential feature is repeated exaggeration and self-deception, if not deception of others.

Sooner or later, consciously or unconsciously, every ambitious person must make a more or less deliberate estimate of his ability. Blest be he who does it early and accurately. Ambition is a wonderful force and makes for progress; emulation is an excellent stimulus, and industry better than both; but in excess, the combination has worked the ruin of many. The young man of high aims who wishes to rival the success of a Lincoln, an Astor or a Virchow, and who thinks that the only necessary conditions are industry, honesty and frugality, makes an egregious error. He reckons in ignorance of two stupendous factors, physical endurance and mental capacity. These are facts as indubitable and as inevitable as death itself. It must come to every physician, it certainly comes frequently to me, to explain to the nervous student that because his colleague can keep well on five hours of sleep, is no reason why he should be able to do the same; to show the irritable, sleepless business man that even if his competitor can work fifteen years without a vacation, he can not do likewise; to convince the ambitious Mrs. X that she simply is not equal to the attainment at the same time of domestic excellence, social eminence and philanthropic distinction, as is the brilliant Mrs. Y.; and to tell the disappointing truth to many that although some fortunate are given master minds in master bodies, this gift is not for all, and that to spur on the weary faculties, is to drive to ruin. Still, if one must plainly see that his talents are far below the maximum, even far below what he had hoped and believed, why should he dissipate what he has in attempting to be what he is not and in fretting because he can not? How many of us exhaust ourselves and wear out our friends by chafing against the chains of the unalterable! Imperturbability is a prince of peace.

Of especial danger is the weakness of being ruled by the feelings-by emotion rather than by reason, by impulse rather

than by judgment. In the bitterness of recognized folly and acknowledged frailty, Burns wrote for his own epitaph:

Is there a man whose judgment clear,
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs himself life's mad career
Wild as the wave;

Here pause-and, through the starting tear,
Survey this grave.

The poor inhabitant below,

Was quick to learn and wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow,
And softer flame;

But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stained his name!

Reader, attend-whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole,
In low pursuit;

Know prudent, cautious self-control
Is wisdom's root.

If this was written with the plaintive note of a sensitive spirit prisoner to turbulent passions, it was also written in the light of a keen perception. A principle of human development is bound up in the lines. The head is to guide the heart. Impulse and emotions are to be governed by knowledge and wisdom.

Inhibition should never sleep. Exaggeration of the instinct of fear and apprehension not only makes people nervous, but is nervousness itself. The thousand and one needless worries over the future are simply providence for the morrow gone mad. Fear of disease and death is normal, but to allow the mind to dwell on these fearsome things is to become a hypochondriac with no more stability than the leaf on the aspen. To shrink from pain is as natural as hunger and as necessary for the preservation of the race, but to be a slave to suffering is to be a nervous wreck. Pain should be a signal officer onlyto inform, never to command. Even the goodly emotion of parental love must not be too exuberant. How many mothers become mere bundles of nerves through needless fussing about the children, and how often a father falls into presenility from the strain to feather the nest superlatively well. To weep is normal, but the one who never restrains the impulse to cry ultimately becomes flabbily lachrymose, a nuisance to self and