Chapter III: Part 3

The church of form, rituals and ceremonies attracts the passive who are willing to let the priest or pastor or prelate take charge of the religious work while they, the attendants or worshippers, sit quietly by and say amen and join in the responses.

Paul said, "Away with those forms." Christ in ministering to humanity gave no forms or made no set sentences for his followers. The Lord's Prayer was given with the admonition, "After this manner pray ye," and certainly not with the command, pray ye with these words.

Form, ceremony and rituals are much like most associated charities, a sort of convention. Forms can not express the deep emotions, the natural longings, or the human desires; they are echoes, hollow and unsatisfying.

For those who do not feel, for those who do not act, for those who belong to churches because of convention, or for social reasons, form and frills fill the bill.

Form is an exterior religion, an outward show. Form doesn't touch the heart or awaken the soul. Form in religion is like a formal dinner. It is show rather than a plan to satisfy human heart hunger.

Opposite to formal religion is the frenzied "scare-you-to-death" excitement method, which relies upon mental intoxication to stir the people, and like other forms of intoxication, the effect soon wears off.

I have little patience or sympathy for the business men who hire professional evangelists to come to town to start revivals. The sensational revivalists have too acute appreciation of the dollar to convince me of their sincerity in their work.

A laborer is worthy of his hire, and a preacher, teacher or benefactor of any sort should be well paid. But when I see these big guns taking away ten to twenty thousand dollars in cold cash for three weeks' campaign converting the poor suffering people, the thought comes to me, that if the evangelist is sincere he should buy a lot of bread, coal and underwear and hire a lot of trained nurses with a big part of that money.

Christ and his Apostles were of the people; they worked with, and among the people; they had no committees, no guarantees and no business men's subscription lists.

It's mighty hard to read about these sensational evangelists taking in thousands of dollars for a couple of weeks' revival meetings, and harmonize that religion with the religion of Christ, the carpenter, and his Apostles, who were fishermen and workmen.

The excitement, intoxicating, frenzy revival method is pretty much always the same in its working. The evangelist starts in with the song "Where is My Wandering Boy Tonight," then follows the picture of mother, which is painted with sobs of blood. Then follows mother's death-bed scene until the audience is in tears. Gesticulation, mimicry, acting, sensationalism, slang and weepy stories follow, until the ferment of excitement is developed into a high state and droves flock to the altar to be made over on the instant into sanctified beings.

The evangelist stays until his engagement is up, and then departs with a pocket full of nice fat bank drafts.

It is a sad commentary on the established profession of ministry that sensational professionals are called in and paid fabulous prices to convert the people in their community.

I do not take much stock in either the frigid form with its frills or the frenzied fire and brimstone, scare-you-to-it extremes.

Somewhere between these extremes is the rational natural sane road to travel; the religion of brotherly love; of cheers, not tears; of hope, not fear; of courage, not weakness; of joy, not sorrow; of help, not hindrance.

The religion that makes us love one another here, not the kind that says we shall know each other there. The religion that has to do with human passions, human trials, human needs, instead of the frigid form or the fevered frenzy; the religion that avoids the extremes of heat and cold, that's the kind the world needs most.

Christ taught love, kindness, charity, and not beautiful churches, opera singing choirs. He spoke not of robes, vestments, forms or rituals.

One of the most beautiful things in the Bible is the story of the good Samaritan with his simple, unostentatious aid to a wounded man, an enemy of his people whom the Samaritan knew was none the less a brother. And you will remember the priest of the temple, the man who taught charity, and love, drew up his skirts and passed the wounded man by.

LAZINESS

We Are Becoming a Nation of Sitters

Danger is in extremes. Too much of anything is bad for the human being's health.

There is a comfortable proportion of exercise and rest mixed together that will give bodily efficiency. Too much exercise is bad, too little is bad.

Until recent years our vocations and the going to or from our places of business gave us a well balanced amount of exercise, rest, work and pleasure, and all went well.

Lately we hear much about worry, neurasthenia, nervous prostration and the like. There are several contributing causes to the mental and physical ills which are caused by "nerves."

First of all, we have an epidemic of labor-saving devices. The principal arguments used by the manufacturer of a labor-saving device is, "It makes money and saves work." Making money and getting soft snaps seem to be the objectives of most human beings.

The labor-saving devices take away exercise. The machine does the work. The artisan simply feeds the hopper, puts in a new roll, or drops in the material. He sits down and watches the wheels go around, likely smoking a cigarette the meanwhile, and more than likely reading the sporting sheet of a yellow newspaper.

Possibly few of my readers have given the matter serious thought, and they will be astounded at the changed work conditions which have come into our modern life.

It will be interesting to note just here some of these changes. Men used to live within walking distance of their work. Now the electric street railway and the speedy automobile have eliminated the necessity for much walking.

Men used to climb stairs. The elevator has now so accustomed us to the conveniences that stairs are taboo.

Machines have replaced muscles. The old printer walked from case to case and got exercise. Today he sits in an easy backed chair and uses a linotype.

Telephoning is quicker than traveling. No one "runs for a doctor."

Our houses have electric washers, electric irons and many other labor-saving devices.

Even the farmer has his telephone, his auto, his riding plow, his milking machine and his cream separator.

In the stores the cash boy has disappeared, the cash carrier takes the money to a girl who sits, a machine makes the change, another machine does her mathematics.

The modern idea of efficiency puts a premium on the sedentary feature of occupations and employees are frequently automatons that sit.

The business man sits at his desk, sits in a comfortable automobile as he goes home, sits at the dinner table and sits all evening at the theater, or at the card table. It is sit, sit, sit until he gets a big abdomen, a puffy skin and a bad liver.

He tries to counteract this with forced exercise in a gymnasium or a couple of hours golfing a week. Very likely his golfing is more interesting because of the side bets, than because of the exercise.

We are losing out on the natural, pleasurable, and practical exercises, mixed in the right proportions to promote physical poise and health. Things are too easy, luxury and comfort too teasing, for the ordinary mortal to resist, and the great mob sits or rides hundreds of times when they should stand or walk.

When my objective point is five or six blocks I walk and I think on the way. I probably get in two to four miles of walking every day, which my friends would save by riding in the street cars or autos.

I walk to my office every morning, a distance of nearly four miles.

I walk alone, so I may relax and not require conscious effort as is the case when one walks with another.

That morning walk prevents me reading slush and worthless news and relieves me of the necessity of talking and using up nerve energy.

I get the worth-while news from my paper by the headlines and by the trained ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I just feel fine all the time and it's because I get to bed early, sleep plenty, exercise naturally, think properly and get the four great body-builders in plenty: air, water, sunshine, food; and the other four great health-makers which are: good thought, good exercise, good rest, and good cheer.

The great crowd aims at ease and so the business man sits and loses out on the exercise his body and mind must have, and therefore the great crowd pays tribute to doctors, sanitariums, rest cures, fake tonics, worthless medicines, freakish diet fads, and crazy cults, isms, and discoveries, that claim to bring health by the easy, lazy, sitting, comfortable route.

Believe me, dear reader, it is not in the cards to play the game of health that way. There "aint no sich animal" said the ruben as he saw the giraffe in the circus, and likewise there "aint no sich thing" as health and happiness for the man who persistently antagonizes nature, and hunts ease where exercise is demanded.

The law of compensation is inexorable in its demand that you have to pay for what you get, and that you can't get worth-while things by worthless plans.

You must exercise enough to balance things, to clear the system, to preserve your strength; it doesn't take much time.

IN THE BIG WOODS

A Grand, Glorious, Restful Recreation

This afternoon I am sitting on a glacial rock in the forest at the foot of Mount Shasta. A beautiful spot to rest and a glorious book of nature to read.

A canopy of deepest blue sky above, with sunshine unstopped by clouds. The rays of old Sol pulsate themselves into an endless variety of flowers, plants and vegetable life which Mother Earth has given birth to in evidence of her gladness and love of the beautiful.

Glorious trees of magnificent size reach up into the blue and give us shade. Ozone sweeps gently through the forest impregnated with the perfume of fir, balsam, cedar, pine and flowers.

In this spot, nature has thrown up mountains of volcanic rock, which hold the winter's snow in everlasting supply to quench the thirst of plant, of animal and millions of humans in the lower country.

The whole hillside around me is a community of springs of crystal water laden with iron, and precious salts. It is the breast of Mother Earth which nurses her offspring.

Here are no noises of the street; the newsboy's cry of "extra" is not heard. The peddler, the din of trucks, the honk of automobiles, the clatter of the city--all these are absent.

There is no noise here; just the sweet music of falling water, and the aeolian lullaby made by the breeze playing on the pine needles.

My eyes take in a panorama of beautiful nature in colors and contrasts that would give stage fright to any artist who tried to paint the scenes on canvas.

I am getting pep, this is my treatment for tired nerves; 'tis the "medcin' of the hills," 'tis nature's cure, and how it brings the pill box or the bottle of tonic into contempt!

I'm letting down the high tension voltage and getting the calm, natural pulsation that nature intended the human machine to have.

So quiet, so peaceful, so natural that I drink in inspiration of a worth-while kind. No war news to read, no records of tragedy, of man's passions, of man's meanness and man's selfishness.

A little chipmunk sits upright on a rock before me wondering at the movements of my yellow pencil and the black mark it makes on the paper.

A delicate lace-winged insect lights on my tablet and a saucy "camp robber" or mutton bird wonders at the unusual sight of me, the big man animal brother. A big beetle is getting his provisions for the winter. I recognize his occupation, for I've read about him in Fabre's wonderful books on insect life.

Here in the sanctum sanctorium of the forest I am made a member of Nature's lodge, and the ants, and bugs, and beetles, and flowers and plants and trees are initiating me and telling me the secrets of the order.

I can only tell you who are in the great busy world outside, the lessons and morals. The real secrets I must not tell; you will receive them when you, too, come to the hills and forests, and sit down on a rock alone and go through the initiation.

You are invited to come in; your application is approved, and you are eligible to membership.

Come to Nature's lodge meeting and clear away the cobwebs from your weary brain; get inspiration and be a man again.

Come and soothe and rest and built up those shredded, weakened, tired, weary nerves. Let the sun put its coat of health and the ozone put the red blood of strength in your veins.

Come and get perfect brain and body-resting sleep. Come to this wonderful, happy, helpful lodge and get a store of energy, and an abundance of vital ammunition with which to make the fight, when you go back to your factory or office.

The doctor can lance the carbuncle, but Nature's outdoor medicine will prevent your having a carbuncle.

The doctor can stop a pain with a poison drug, but Nature's outdoor medicine will prevent you having the disorder which makes the pain.

No, brother, you can't get health out of a bottle or a pill box. You can get it from the Mother Nature's laboratory where she compounds air, water, sunshine, beauty, music, thought; where she gives you exercise and rest, health, happiness, all summed up into cashable assets for the human in the shape of poise, efficiency, peace and that spells PEP.

MOTHER

The Most Unselfish Person in the World

Mother, you are the one person in all the world whose kindness was never the preface to a request.

That's the sweetest tribute we can pay you, and the most truthful one.

It covers devotion, love, sentiment, motherhood, and all the noble attributes that go to make the word, Mother, the most hallowed, most sacred, most beautiful word in the English language.

There are not words or sentences that can express to you what we think of you or convey our appreciation of you.

You want our love; you have it. You should be told of our love; we tell you. Appreciation and gratitude are payments on account, but with all our appreciation and with our whole life's gratitude, the debt we are under can never be paid.

"We have careful words for the stranger,
And smiles for the some time guest--
But oft to our own the bitter tone,
Though we love our own the best."

We've hurt you, Mother, many times, by our thoughtlessness and by our resentment of your plans and your views about the things we did, and you have had heartaches because of such actions of ours.

Forgive us, Mother, we're sorry; and there you are, dear; the moment we ask your forgiveness, your great, tender, loving heart has forgiven us and erased the marks of transgression.

Always thinking of us, always excusing us, always doing for us, always watching us and always loving us in the most unselfish way.

We love you, Mother; we appreciate you. We are going to show our appreciation and love so much more from now on. We have just come to our senses and realized what a wonderful, necessary, helpful being you are.

Your sweetness, your gentleness, your goodness, your love, are parts of you.

They all go to make up that word, Mother.

Your life, your acts, your example, your Motherhood, have all helped the world so much more than you will ever know.

In the everlasting record of good deeds your name is in gold.

In the everlasting memory of those who appreciate you, your face, your life, is the sacred, helpful picture that grows more beautiful as the days pass.

In tenderness, in appreciation, in love, let us dedicate these thoughts, and voice these expressions to Mother, who gives her life, by inches, and who would give it all on the instant for her children, if necessity called for the sacrifice.

How feeble are words when we try to describe Mother!

OUR BODIES

They Are Made Up of Mineral Substances

We speak of the three kingdoms: the animal, the vegetable and the mineral kingdoms, and every substance is classified into one of these.

The exact truth is there is but one kingdom, which is the mineral. The vegetable substances and animal combinations are made of mineral elements.

In a rough way we distinguish the mineral kingdom as those substances called elements, such as iron, sulphur, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, sodium and the like.

These elements are unchangeable in themselves; they do not grow. The animal is made of mineral elements associated in certain proportions, such as albumin, carbon, lime, water, salt and the like. The vegetable kingdom consists of these various chemical combinations also.

Seed when planted extracts from the air and the earth the minerals and combines them into a plant which grows and has for its object the making of seeds to reproduce and perpetuate itself.

The plant has life but it has no spiritual or mental equipment and therein vegetable life differs from the animal life. The animal eats vegetable and animal flesh. Through the vegetable he gets the mineral necessary for his body building. Through the animal food he gets the mineral from the flesh he eats, which flesh was first of all built up through the vegetables the animal ate.

These are definite facts; there is no theory about them.

The human body analyzed and separated into something like a dozen substances, among which are water, which is three-fourths of the body's structure; carbon, lime, phosphorus, iron, potassium, salt and so on.

By reading a book on anatomy you can learn just exactly the proportions of the substances in the human body.

All these chemicals are formed in the shape of little cells, myriads of which are in the body. These cells are constantly being destroyed and new ones made to take their place.

Parts of the body are replaced every twenty-four hours, other parts less often.

Scientists tell us that the whole body is replaced every seven years. Every move you make destroys cells which nature has to replace. Isn't it reasonable then to conclude that if a man should fail to eat enough lime for his body-building, his bones would suffer. If he does not get enough iron his blood will suffer, and so on.

I am definitely convinced that most of the actual physical ailments are caused by a deficiency of the mineral elements in the body.

Phosphorus and potash are necessary to the human welfare. These elements are in the husk of the wheat and the husk is taken off in making flour, and the flour is mostly starch.

The person who lives mostly on white bread will suffer from lack of phosphorus and potash.

Phosphorus also is found in the skin of an apple, so if you peel an apple you do not get the phosphorus.

FOOD

The Food We Eat Is Fuel for the Human Engine

The practice of medicine in the past has been directed towards the curing of developed disease and physical ailments. The practice of medicine in the future is to be along the line of preventive practice. Science is showing us how to prevent infection. Science is fighting the deadly microbe which comes to us in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat and the infected things we touch.

Nature has supplied the human body with a home guard of necessary bacteria and in the circulation system are phagocytes which fight the invading microbes and generally destroy them.

When the system is weakened through disease, through lack of exercise or through improper food, disease has an easy time.

The important thing to prevent disease is to keep yourself fit, and the golden prescription which I have given in PEP will serve to keep you in perfect health.

I want you to remember this golden prescription; it is composed of the following: Good Air, Good Water, Good Sunshine, Good Food, Good Exercise, Good Cheer, Good Rest and Good Thought. If you take this golden prescription you will make of yourself a giant in brain and brawn strength.

You can't get health out of a bottle. You can't get the system to absorb iron if you take it in the form of tincture of iron. You can eat a pound of rust, which is oxide of iron, and none of that iron will be absorbed in the system.

As I have explained in another chapter you must take the mineral in the system through the vegetable route. You will get iron, that will be assimilated, when you eat beefsteak. Beefsteak has blood, the blood has iron. You will also get iron when you eat spinach.

Every element necessary for your body is found in some vegetable or animal food; therefore, you should refrain from confining yourself to a very few articles of food.

Don't pay any attention to the faddist who gives you a rigorous diet or unpalatable food. You simply make yourself miserable and you generate more worry and unhappiness by your discipline than the good you get from these freak fads.

We all eat too much, especially too much meat.

That a strict vegetarian diet is the necessary thing for good health I deny. The sheep, the cow, and horse are vegetarians and they are short lived. The eagle, the lion and man, eat animal food and they are long lived.

I may be prejudiced, but it does seem to me that the strict vegetarians are skinny, sallow looking lot of humans, speaking generally. I do find that the healthier specimens of vegetarians are those who eat plenty of eggs and drink plenty of milk, both of which are animal food, and both of which have nearly all the elements necessary to sustain life.

I don't like the fads in the matter of eating. The amount a person should eat is in exact accord with the law of compensation.

The human body is a machine from a food standpoint. It is an engine that has work to do and accordingly the amount of fuel necessary for the engine should be in proportion to the amount of work that engine is called on to perform.

The hotels, restaurants and food purveyors invent palate tickling food to tease the human to eat, and hotels and restaurants are mostly patronized by people who do not have much physical work to do; the consequence is they eat too much.

You do not often find dyspepsia or indigestion among men or women who work hard physically.

You who work indoors with little physical exercise will find wonderful benefits if you will cut down the fuel.

You will get sick if you pile in more fuel than is necessary for the engine.

If your engine needs twenty pounds of steam how foolish it is to keep up a hundred pounds pressure.

If you had five-horsepower work to perform how foolish it would be to install a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound engine.

Much of the physical trouble comes from filling up the boiler too much.

Cut down the food and you will feel better.

DAUGHTERS

A Message From a Daddy's Heart

Dear little Mary Elizabeth and Nancy Lou and dear little girls everywhere who read these lines: here is a message and a wish from daddy's heart.

I want you to be golden girls, girls who love home and children; girls who love simple things, natural things; I want you to be sweet rather than pretty, lovable rather than popular.

May the mirror never reflect paint, rouge or make-up on your face. A little talcum powder is all right.

Do not look upon matrimony as a means to provide food and finery for you.

Do not be ashamed of an old-fashioned mother. Do not be a "good fellow." Do not be afraid to say "I can't afford it."

Help the family; be part of it, and not apart from it.

When you are old enough to have a beau, do not be afraid to bring him into your home, no matter how humble it is.

When I was a beau I courted my sweetheart in her home. My treat was red apples and a walk down the lane. Most every beau nowadays courts his girl with a taxi to the theatre, and red lobsters after the dinner; ten dollars they pay where I paid ten cents, and I had ten times more happiness.

Be modest, girls; it is your greatest asset.

Don't gossip or belittle other girls; find the good you can say of others; that quality makes you more attractive.

Keep your voice low, be gentle, sweet, kind, human and simple; that is what my sweetheart is; that is why our married life has been a honeymoon all these years.

Watch out for word candy and flattery; these things mark the hypocrite and a hypocrite is an abomination. Flattery is a practiced deceit--a dishonorable bait to catch affections.

Do not allow any young man to relate a story in your presence that has the slightest risque turn to it. Show by your words and your actions that such presumption is an insult.

Fine feathers never make fine birds; don't borrow finery; don't be attractive for your fine dresses; the men attracted by fluff, frills, feathers and furbelows are not worth shucks.

Be square with yourself and square to the man who is after your heart; put yourself mentally in the place of a wife, when a man gets serious.

Don't hurry, girls; don't judge the man by his money prospects but by his character and ambition.

Have nothing to do with any young suitor who isn't always kind, considerate and attentive to his mother.

Marry a man of character who courts you in the sweet, simple old way.

If a young man spends money extravagantly before marriage, hard times will always be around during his married life.

The most precious possessions in the world are happiness and love, and these; come from simple things, genuineness, and usefulness.

Learn to cook and to sew. You can't be happy and idle at the same time.

Learn to be independent of dressmaker and milliner and cooks. You may have them, I hope you will, but master these useful vocations yourself, then you will have dresses and hats and dinners worth while.

The world is full of new-fashioned slangy, dancy, fancy, foolish girls who marry for style, stunts and society, and their married life is failure, worry and sorrow.

Be the golden, pure, old-fashioned, sweet, simple, quiet, modest girl who knows things, rather than one who is a show-off girl.

And here's a tip to you, young man, who reads these lines, get a golden girl like I have described; a girl of pure gold and not glittering tinsel; a sweet, natural, sensible girl, that will do team work and be a helpmate to you and not a drawback and money spender.

Daddy knows these things; he's been around the world. He is endowed with an ability to observe, analyze and benefit.

He's had experience, he's seen the world from cottage to castle, and these things he tells you because of his love for you and because he wants you to have such a home life as he has.

And these truths, these hopes, are from the very bottom of his heart to his daughters Mary Elizabeth and Nancy Lou and all the other girls who have read these lines.

POISE

A Necessity to the Person Who Accomplishes

There are men who cannot be kept down by circumstances or obstacles.

These men progress with confidence in their hearts and smiles on their faces. They do not lie in wait for the band wagon or favorable winds; they make things happen.

They are, of course, alert and alive to favorable opportunity and helpful influences when they come their way.

These men are men of good health. They are out of doors much, they carry their heads high and breathe in good air deeply. They greet friends with a smile and put meaning and feeling into every hand clasp.

Let's you and I follow their trail, for it leads out on to the big road.

Do not fear being misunderstood, right will finally come in to its own.

We will keep our minds off our enemies, and keep our thoughts on our purpose; we will make up our minds what we want to do. We will mark a straight line on the log and hew to that line.

Fear is the dope drug that kills initiative, hate the poison that shatters clear thinking.

Hate and fear are iron ore in our life's vessel, it deflects the compass and prevents our holding to the course.

There are splendid worth-while things for us to do and with continuity of action and singleness of purpose the days will pass by, as we are seizing opportunity and making use of the things required for the fulfillment of our desires.

We are like the coral insect that takes from the running tide the material to build a solid fortress. Our running tide is the gliding golden days.

Let's waste no time in trying to make friends or in seeking to attach ourselves to others. True friends are not caught by pursuit; they come to us, they happen through circumstances we do not create.

Self-reliance is ours and we must first use it for our own betterment. We will then have a surplus of energy to allow us to help others.

Solitude beats society, relaxation beats conventional function, and foolish so-called pleasures.

Our energy hours must be devoted to our purpose and ideals. Atween times we must rest, relax and recuperate the waste that strenuosity makes.

Breathe good air, bask in the sunshine, see nature and say to yourself, "All these treasures are for me, all these things I am part of."

Do not prepare for death, prepare for life. Preparing for death brings the end before your allotted time.

Like Job of old that which we fear will come to us. We must not think of death, or waste time preparing for it. It makes us miserable today. It makes us weak and fills us with fear and it draws the day of our departure nearer.

Today is ours. Live, freely, fully today. Be unafraid, unhurried, and undisturbed.

We are building character, and the way we build it is by mental attitude, by our acts, and the way we employ the precious time today.

Lay hold of the great forces of nature, realize the wonderful power of the will and you will be strong, a veritable king among men.

PIONEER MOTHERS

Knitting From Necessity Today, Knitting for Pleasure Tomorrow

As I write these lines I am riding on a slow train through Oklahoma. Purposely I am in the day coach smoker for that's the place to study local color, and see the natives.

The atmosphere around is oil and gas, the talk is "bringing in a gusher," "tanks," "rigs," "leases," "wild cat sales," "offsets," "selling stock," and the like; all the phrases, all the talk is striking it rich, getting money.

Indians, Mexicans, Negroes, college boys in surveying crews and speculators form a hodge podge. Men from all parts of the states are here seeking dollars.

I have been around these oil and gas fields in autos and by teams. I've been observing life, character, passions and habits.

I've seen brave women here with nursing babies living in tents or patchwork shacks. Some of these women dream at night of silks and satins and mansions and position.

By day these poor women work and mend and cook and sew, doing their part to help things along. Many of the husbands are earning five to eight dollars a day and spending most of it on foolishness. The poor wives get only enough for bare necessities, and yet they patiently work and mend and cook and sew.

Talk about patience; talk about devotion; talk about grit; talk about courage; just come down to the oil fields and see these poor pioneer women.

Talk about selfishness; talk about cowardice; talk about brutality; talk about debasement; come down and see some of these men making $25 to $50 a week and never a cent in their pockets Monday morning.

Woman is called weak--that means the rich woman--the poor woman possesses strength that psychology cannot explain. Men can be analyzed, but you are at a loss to understand woman. Poor women grow into a sweet replica of their mothers, the most unselfish, patient, generous, forgiving, lovable, adorable creatures on earth.

Man grows away from his mother; he roughens and cools and grows selfish and expects and demands the woman shall love him with all these faults, and generally she does.

The poor woman makes an idol of her husband and in her love thinks he is ideal.

Let him spend his money, she sticks to him; let poverty and want come to the home, she sticks. Let ill treatment be her portion, she sticks; and withal there are smiles on her lips most of the time.

I'm sorry for the poor woman in the oil fields, and the only glimmer of compensation I can find is that she doesn't have nervous prostration like her wealthy society sister has.

Those little husky children I see over there in the yard playing Indian will likely know the worth of a dollar later on. I peep into the future and predict that those boys will get on in the world, and Mother who is chopping wood for supper I see some day with a nice black grosgrain silk dress and a ball of knitting in her silk hand bag.

I see her from necessity knitting stockings for her children. In the future some day, far beyond want, for her sons will be successful men, she still is knitting and mending and helping, a smile on her lips and a soft light in her eye.

Plump, round and well fed, she sits there knitting with pleasure and dreaming of the pioneer days she spent in the Oklahoma cabin. Yes, that's the picture of the future.

The train is pulling into a city; I don't want the picture of the poor, hard-working, unselfish, sacrificing woman and her worthless husband to remain in my memory.

The sons will come out all right; they always do when they have a shiftless dad and a good mother. And somehow in this great open splendid Western country there is opportunity for such boys.

The big men here were all poor a short time ago. Their grandfathers were rich, their fathers spent their inheritance, they suffered poverty and want and their extremity was the son's spur to ambitious activity.

In the car are four young sports coming home from college on a vacation. Their daddies are all oil kings, and these youngsters will inherit fortunes.

Those youngsters who were playing Indian will get on in the world; these four young millionaire kids will go broke; their heads are not shaped right; their jaws slant back; it isn't in them. I know something of character.

Bye-bye, Mamma, with your little cabin and your boys; some day you will have peace and plenty.

Those four oil Johnnies will marry girls who have plenty and some day those girls will have to do the family washing.

The wheel turns, it's the history of the past. From shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations.

Lincolns, Garfields, and Edisons came from just such little cabins and just such rough, hard, bare life as I have been seeing this afternoon.

ANGER

It's a Temporary Mental Derangement

Anger and acts of revenge are great pull-backs to health.

Anger makes the blood rush to the head, weakens the body, and distorts the vision.

When a woman gets angry, she quarrels with her lover, her husband or her children. Any one of these things is a calamity.

When a man gets angry he is a wild man, his eyes glitter, his mouth is cruel, his fists clinch, his body trembles, his blood veins strain and he does more harm in five minutes' anger than nature can repair in a day.

Anger makes weak stomachs, dizzy heads, poor judgment, lost friends, despair, sickness and likely the confirmed habit will lead to apoplexy.

When two men have differences, watch the cool man finish victor, the angry man always loses.

Keep your head; let the other fellow fret and fume.

He will tie himself up in a knot and finish loser.

Serenity is a God's blessing and fortunate is the man who can hold his serenity.

When you get a letter that stirs you to anger, don't answer that letter for forty-eight hours, then write a moderately vitriolic letter,--and then tear it up.

I know you are tempted, goaded and your limit of endurance is sometimes exhausted.

I know revenge is sweet only in anticipation. I know that revenge by anger and by the cruel "eye for an eye" measure is never, never sweet.

I have had imposition, ingratitude, insincerity and advantages taken of me because I kept my poise and serenity.

I have been called easy, and soft, and friends have shown me where I was imposed upon, but I was stooping to conquer. I kept my reserve, my resistance and my power ready until time, place, and preparedness let me spring my coup and then I cashed in beautifully in principal and interest for those acts and hurts.

I have power now in my hands to make others suffer, keenly and deeply, for wrongs they have done me. Yet I do not exercise that power to revenge.

I have been misjudged and misunderstood because cowardly persons have lied and villified me and accused me of motives and acts of which I was innocent.

I am well hated now by one person in particular who blames me for things another is guilty of. A word from me would clear me, but it would bring gloom and despair to that person and would not make me any less cognizant of my innocence.

Time somehow will bring out the truth; the cowardly, guilty individual who basks in the favor of the one who is angry at me will surely pay for his wrong.

This I know and I am satisfied with the ultimate result.

My former friend who is angry at me would simply switch the anger current to the guilty one if I told the facts; the guilty person couldn't stand that anger like I can. My act would break up a home and bring misery.

I am far removed from the location where these people live, and I can stand the anger of the one who puts the blame on me and accepts the lies of another as truth.

I have the documents in black and white, yet I don't use them because I have poise and the consciousness of knowing I am right and those who are dear to me know it, too.

I could be angry, but I couldn't live and enjoy and write books like "Pep" and this book if I let anger get in and spoil the serenity which is mine.

I've tried both plans, anger and poise, and I like poise better.

I believe I hear more birds, I believe I get more pleasure out of life and living than the man who gets angry and loves revenge.

Anyway I think so, and "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."

SALT

It's a Drug; Too Much Is Bad for You

Don't eat too much salt. Salt is a drug; it carries with it lime and magnesia and they tend to clog up things.

Too much salt will likely cause gall stones or gravel.

Some persons sprinkle salt over potatoes, beef and everything they eat; it's a bad practice.

You get enough salt in your bacon, and in the meat you eat. The food as it comes from the kitchen has plenty of salt in it.

Those who eat too much salt must suffer.

People have told me that the craving for salt was a natural thing; it isn't so, it's a cultivated taste. You didn't like salty olives the first time you tasted them.

Because deer and cattle greedily lick salt is no proof salt is natural and good, and needed in quantities. Cattle and horses will eat loco weed and when they get the habit they will eat and eat until they get crazy.

Man will crave tobacco; it isn't a natural taste, it's merely a cultivated taste.

The desire for excess salt on everything you eat is a habit and a bad habit.

It tends to make calcareous deposits in your system, and it will affect the blood and the muscles and the bones.

Nature puts practically enough salt in the food and cooks certainly add enough salt in their seasoning to furnish all the system needs.

Excess salt eating dulls the finer sensibilities of taste just as excess pepper or Worcester sauce or mustard does. It kills the fine natural flavor.

There's enough salt in butter to season the eggs you eat. Try your eggs next time without putting pepper and salt on them.

Learn to get the natural flavors and you will enjoy your food more.

Remember again excess craving for salt is simply evidence that you have a drug habit, not as dangerous as other drug habits, but bad for you just the same.

Check yourself every time you reach for a salt cellar.

Watch the children; don't let them eat too much salt.

INSOMNIA

It's Caused By High Mental Tension

Sleeping, like breathing and digesting, is controlled by the subconscious brain centers. Natural sleep requires no positive mental impulse; it's just relaxing and nature takes care of the process.

That is natural sleep, but when you start your dry cell battery, the brain, and commence to worry and fear, you are going to stay awake; then the conscious mind dominates the subconscious mind and you banish the very comforter you seek to woo.

Business men who keep up high tension all day on business matters, and high tension all evening in threshing all over again the business of the day, are almost sure to suffer from insomnia.

The continuance of the day and night habit of thinking of business brings on the insomnia habit and that starts the auto suggestion that you are fighting for your natural sleep. This produces worry, the demon that kills and maims.

To have an occasional wakeful night is natural; it is an evidence of intelligence: the mental dullard never has wakeful nights.

Unless the fear of sleeplessness becomes a full grown phobia no anxiety need be felt. The fear of insomnia, the over anxiety to go to sleep, is to be more dreaded than insomnia itself.

To get refreshing sleep you must get physical tiredness. Take exercise. Walk in one direction until the first symptoms of becoming tired appears, then walk home. Take a hot bath, then sponge with cold or cool water. Put a cold cloth at the head, rub the backbone with cold water.

Open your windows wide, then relax. Don't worry; you are going to sleep.

Lie on your back, open your eyes wide, look up as if you were trying to see your eyebrows, hold your eyes open this way ten to twenty seconds, then close them slowly. Repeat this several times. Soon the sandman will come.

Concentrate your mind on auto suggestion like this: "I am going to sleep--sound heavy, restful, peaceful sleep. My eyelids are getting heavy--heavy. I am going to close them and go to sleep."

Don't try counting imaginary sheep jumping over fence rails. Don't count numbers. It is a bad habit.

If these suggestions do not help you the first night say, "All right, my brain was too active, so then tomorrow I will let down a bit."

Next night eat one or two dry crackers, chew them slowly, masticate them thoroughly until you can swallow easily.

This little food will draw the blood pressure from the brain and help you to go to sleep.

Drive out business and worry thoughts. Think faith and courage thoughts.

MISTAKES

Not the Making But the Repeating, Is Your Danger

To live down the past and erase the errors, live boldly the present.

Do not chastise or condemn yourself for mistakes you have made; you are not alone; everyone has made missteps, has hurt others, has wronged himself.

Everyone has had trouble, reverses and misfortune; it's the plan of things, and these things come to give us experience and correct our future acts by the knowledge of how to avoid errors and wrongs.

Yesterday is dead; forget it. Face about; live today; be busy, be active, be intent on doing right and accomplishing things worth while.

The world's memory is short. A misdeed, an error, a wrongful act on your part may set busy tongues wagging today and you may suffer from calumny and criticism. Of course your errors will be magnified and your wrongs enlarged beyond the truth; that's the penalty you pay.

Lies are always added to truth in telling of one's misdeeds. Be brave; weather the storm, it will soon blow over. Tomorrow the world will forget.

You've suffered in your own conscience; that's all the debt you can pay on the old score.

Now, then, get busy with the glorious opportunity today presents. Don't make the same mistake again. There are no eyes in the back of your head; look forward.

Don't worry by envying the other fellow and comparing his good deeds with your mistakes; you only see his good. He has had troubles and made mistakes too, but you and the world have forgotten them.

If every man's sins were printed on their foreheads the crowds you pass would all wear their hats over their eyes.

I'm trying to comfort you, and slap you on the back and tell you you are just human and all humans make false steps.

The patriarchs in the Bible made mistakes, but they got in the fold. History has perpetuated their names. Their lives on the whole were worth while. It's the sum total of acts that count.

TOMORROW

A Little Analysis of Our Relation to Eternity

One man says the present is everything, the eternity is nothing.

The other man says eternity is everything, present is nothing.

I believe the real truth is, both are man's chief concern, and neither is all truth.

In this matter the general rule I have so often pointed out will harmoniously apply; that rule is, avoid extremes.

Those who believe that the now, the present, is the all important thing in man's life have the fashionable or favorite point of view.

Man definitely knows much about the present, he knows much about life. He is in the midst of life--it pulsates all around him and in him.

We know positively that the law of compensation is inexorable in its demands for right and positive in its punishment of wrong.

We know that on this earth kindness, love, occupation, help, truth, honor and sympathy are investments which bring happiness today. You get your pay instantly when you have done a helpful act and you get your punishment instantly when you have done a hurtful act.

That there is a future most of us agree, because good sense and logic points to that sane and reasonable conclusion.

So be it, with a belief in the future estate, it is reasonable to assume that our acts and lives in the present estate will have influence on our future estate.

We know positively of today, and the happiness we can get from good deeds done today.

If we will have power in the future to look back to today's acts, well and good, if today's acts are worth while.

The other view that eternity is everything and the present is nothing is the antiquated view, the narrow view; the, I might say, illiterate view.

That view warps the present life; it calls for present self-chastisement, present gloom, present sorrow and present misery.

It takes the tangible definite today, calls it nothing, and accepts the intangible unknown eternity as everything.

It trades the definite for the indefinite. It calls life a bubble, a vapor, a shadow. In fact, it makes gloom on today's sunshine and puts its believers into a purgatory; a dismal unhappy punishment antechamber where man exists and waits peeping out of his cell windows for a little imagined view of eternity.

He waits and endures the unpleasant interval, steeled against definite pleasures and evident life of today, and worried into an intoxicated colored belief in the expected happiness of the undefined future.

He refuses to think of definite life of today and spoils the thought of those who do.

He is a blockade to progress, a disagreeable part of life's picture.

He gets no happiness in the today which is in his hands, he loses this opportunity during his definite existence, and lives on future hopes in a future state which no man today knows what it will be.

Both theories as ultimate beliefs are wrong, yet each has some truth in its conclusion.

By taking the words eternity and present and saying both means everything, we avoid extremes and form a truth that is rational, and harmonious to good reason.

The man who says present is all does so because he is an utilitarian. He acts on the definite and refuses to believe in the abstract. Anything that is outside the sphere of his vision and action is of little concern to him.

The man who says eternity is all, wastes opportunity, example and warps himself into a miserable hermit.

Life is irrevocable. Every act in our life is placed, set, and fixed.

Every act goes in the record book of yesterday and it cannot be changed.

Acts that hurt others will rebound and hurt us. Deeds that helped others will rebound and help us. This much is certain.

There is a future, I believe that. There is a God, I believe that.

Just what the future is, and just what God is, I do not know in perfect detail.

Reward for good and punishment for bad, is part of God's plan, and I am conscious of this truth.

I know that justice prevails in this life, and this life is what I am living now.

If I live and act today in what I sincerely believe is in tune with God's purpose, I shall in my future estate benefit by those acts.

If I live and act today, disregarding all around me, selfishly catering to personal purpose, believing that eternity is everything and present is nothing, I am passing definite opportunity to do good now, for a hope of personal reward in an eternity, the which is indefinite as to what it shall be.

I shall therefore strive to do, and to be, right; to be kind, helpful, cheery and smiling now, for the reward such acts bring now.

And I shall doubtless have as good a record and passport to the future as the man who suffers now and lives only upon his selfish hope of the future.

His is fear thought, mine is faith thought, in the all wise, all powerful, all seeing, all right Ruler of the universe, who gave me my life, my brain, my reason, which I am trying to use, as nearly as my limitations will allow, to helping myself and helping others to smile, to be happy, to be serene, to be confident, to be competent, to be useful.

This is as I see it. I wouldn't do what I do, think what I think or act as I act unless I were sincere.

Below all this is charity, which means you have the unquestioned right to do and to be what your best thought and conscience tells you to do and to be.

Nevertheless it is well to reason with one another on the subject of the now and the tomorrow of our existence for it is a universal subject on which all men must make a decision.

SINCERITY

Do Not Accept Sincerity as Proof of Truth

"I believe in him because he is so sincere."

You've heard that, haven't you? I never could understand why a sensible person would use such logic.

Sincerity is no evidence of truth. The Hindu mother is sincere who throws her babe to the crocodiles, but her sincerity is no proof that by this sacrifice she is sure of her salvation.

The Christian Scientist is sincere in the belief that medicines do not cure diseases. The doctor is equally sincere that medicines will cure disease.