'Gracious powers! There's nothing to laugh at in that
exhibition!' the doctor reproved him, with an acrimonious
savagery. 'I don't know which makes me sicker; to stay in
there and listen to them, or come out here and find you
thinking they're _funny_!'

They are funny!' insisted the Judge tranquilly. 'I stood by
the door and listened to the scraps of talk I could catch,
till I thought I should have a fit. I never heard anything
funnier on the stage.'

'Looky here, Nat,' the doctor stared up at him angrily,
'they're not monkeys in a zoo, to be looked at only on
holidays and then laughed at! They're the other half of a
whole that we're half of, and don't you forget it! Why in the
world should you think it funny for them to do this tomfool
trick all winter and have nervous prostration all summer to
pay for it? You'd lock up a _man_ as a dangerous lunatic if
he spent his life so. What they're like, and what they do with
their time and strength concerns us enough sight more than
what the tariff is, let me tell you.'

'I admit that what your wife is like concerns you a whole
lot!' The Judge laughed good-naturedly in the face of the
little old bachelor. 'Don't commence jumping on the American
woman so! I won't stand it! She's the noblest of her sex!'

'Do you know why I am bald?' said Dr. Melton, running his hand
over his shining dome.

'If I did, I wouldn't admit it,' the Judge put up a cautious
guard, 'because I foresee that whatever I say will be used as
evidence against me.'

'I've torn out all my hair in desperation at hearing such men
as you claim to admire and respect and wish to advance the
American woman. You don't give enough thought to her--real
thought--from one year's end to another to know whether you
think she has an immortal soul or not!'

Later Lydia's husband insists that they give a dinner.

It was to be a large dinner--large, that is, for Endbury--of
twenty covers, and Lydia had never prepared a table for
so many guests. The number of objects necessary for the
conventional setting of a dinner table appalled her. She was
so tired, and her attention was so fixed on the complicated
processes going on uncertainly in the kitchen, that her brain
reeled over the vast quantity of knives and forks and plates
and glasses needed to convey food to twenty mouths on a festal
occasion. They persistently eluded her attempts to marshal
them into order. She discovered that she had put forks for the
soup--that in some inexplicable way at the plate destined for
an important guest there was a large kitchen spoon of iron, a
wild sort of whimsical humor rose in her from the ferment of
utter fatigue and anxiety. When Paul came in, looking very
grave, she told him with a wavering laugh, 'If I tried as hard
for ten minutes to go to Heaven as I've tried all day to have
this dinner right, I'd certainly have a front seat in the
angel choir. If anybody here to-night is not satisfied, it'll
be because he's harder to please than St. Peter himself.'

During the evening:

Lydia seemed to herself to be in an endless bad dream. The
exhausting efforts of the day had reduced her to a sort
of coma of fatigue through which she felt but dully the
successive stabs of the ill-served unsuccessful dinner. At
times, the table, the guests, the room itself, wavered before
her, and she clutched at her chair to keep her balance. She
did not know that she was laughing and talking gaily and
eating nothing. She was only conscious of an intense longing
for the end of things, and darkness and quiet.

When it was all over and her husband was compelled to recognize that
it had been a failure, his mental attitude is thus expressed:

He had determined to preserve at all costs the appearance
of the indulgent, non-critical, over-patient husband that he
intensely felt himself to be. No force, he thought grimly,
shutting his jaws hard, should drag from him a word of
his real sentiments. Fanned by the wind of this virtuous
resolution, his sentiments grew hotter and hotter as he walked
about, locking doors and windows, and reviewing bitterly the
events of the evening. If he was to restrain himself from
saying, he would at least allow himself the privilege of
feeling all that was possible to a man deeply injured.

And that night Lydia felt for the "first time the quickening to life
of her child. And during all that day, until then, she had forgotten
that she was to know motherhood." Can words more forcefully depict the
_worry of the squirrel-cage_ than this--that an unnecessary dinner,
given in unnecessary style, at unnecessary expense, to visitors to
whom it was unnecessary should have driven from her thought, and
doubtless seriously injured, the new life that she was so soon to give
to the world?

Oh, men and women of divine descent and divine heritage, quit your
squirrel-cage stage of existence. Is life to be one mere whirling
around of the cage of useless toil or pleasure, of mere imagining that
you are doing something? Work with an object. Know your object, that
it is worthy the highest endeavor of a human being, and then pursue it
with a divine enthusiasm that no obstacle can daunt, an ardor that no
weariness can quench. Then it is you will begin to live. There is no
life in _worry_. Worry is a waste of life. If you are a worrier, that
is a proof you (in so far as you worry) do not appreciate the value of
your own life, for a worthy object, a divine enthusiasm, a noble ardor
are in themselves the best possible preventives against worry. They
dignify life above worry. Worry is undignified, petty, paltry. Where
you know you have something to do worth doing, you are conscious of
the Divine Benediction, and who can worry when the smile of God rests
upon him? This is a truism almost to triteness, and yet how few fully
realize it. It is the unworthy potterers with life, the dabblers in
life-stuff, those who blind themselves to their high estate, those who
are unsure of their footing who worry. The true aristocrat is never
worried about his position; the orator convinced of the truth of his
message worries not as to how it will be received; the machinist sure
of his plans hesitates not in the construction of his machinery;
the architect assured of his accuracy pushes on his builders without
hesitancy or question, fear, or alarm; the engineer knowing his engine
and his destination has no heart quiver as he handles the lever. It is
the doubter, the unsure, the aimless, the dabbler, the frivolous,
the dilettante, the uncertain that worry. How nobly Browning set this
forth in his Epilogue:

What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
--Being--Who?
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.
No, at noonday in the bustle of man's worktime
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
'Strive and thrive!' cry 'Speed,--fight on, fare ever
There as here!'

And this is not "mere poetry." Or rather it is because it is "mere
poetry" that it is _real life_. Browning had nearly seventy years of
it. He knew. Where there are those to whom "God has whispered in the
ear," there is no uncertainty, no worry. The musician who knows his
instrument, knows his music, knows his key, and knows his time to play
never hesitates, never falters, never worries. With tone clear, pure,
strong, and certain, he sends forth his melodies or harmonies into
the air. Cannot you, in your daily life, be a true and sure musician?
Cannot you be _certain_--absolutely, definitely certain--of your right
to play the tune of life in the way you have it marked out before you,
and then go ahead and play! Play, in God's name, as God's and man's
music-maker.




CHAPTER XIII

RELIGIOUS WORRIES AND WORRIERS


Misunderstandings, misconceptions, and ignorance in regard to what
really is religion have caused countless millions to mourn--and worry;
indeed, far more to worry than to mourn. Religion should be a joyous
thing, the bringing of the son and daughter into close relationship
with the Father. Instead, for centuries, it has been a battle for
creeds, for mental assent to certain doctrines, rather than a growth
in brotherhood and loving relationship, and those who could not see
eye to eye with one another deemed it to be their duty to fight and
worry each other--even to their death.

This is not the place for any theological discussion; nor is it my
intent to present the claims of any church or creed. Each reader must
do that for himself, and the less he worries over it, the better I
think it will be for him. I have read and reread Cardinal Newman's
wonderful _Pro Apologia_--his statement as to why and how he entered
the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, and it has thrilled me with
its pathos and evidence of deep spiritual endeavor. Charles Warren
Stoddard's _Troubled Heart and How It Found Rest_ is another similar
story, though written by an entirely different type of man. Each
of these books revealed the inner thought and life of men who were
worried about religion, and by worry I mean anxious to the point of
abnormality, disturbed, distressed unnecessarily. Yet I would not be
misunderstood. Far be it from me, in this age of gross materialism and
worship of physical power and wealth, to decry in the least a proper
degree of solicitude for one's personal salvation. The religious life
of the individual--the real, deep, personal, hidden, unseen, inner
life of a human soul--is a wonderfully delicate thing, to be touched
by another only with the profoundest love and deepest wisdom. Hence I
have little to say about one's own inner struggles, except to affirm
and reaffirm that wisdom, sanity, and religion itself are _all_
against worrying about it. Study religion, consider it, accept it,
follow it, earnestly, seriously, and constantly, but do it in a
rational manner, seeking the essentials, accepting them and then
_resting_ in them to the full and utter exclusion of all worry.

But there is another class of religious worriers, viz., those
who worry themselves about _your_ salvation. Again I would not be
misunderstood, nor thought to decry a certain degree of solicitude
about the spiritual welfare of those we love, but here again the
caution and warning against worry more than ever holds good. Most of
these worriers have found comfort, joy, and peace in a certain line of
thought, which has commended itself to them as _Truth_--the one,
full, complete, indivisible Truth, and it seems most natural for human
nature to be eager that others should possess it. This is the secret
of the zeal of the street Salvationist, whose flaming ardor is bent
on reaching those who seldom, if ever, go to church. The burden of his
cry is that you must flee from the wrath to come--hell--by accepting
the vicarious atonement made by the "blood of Jesus." In season and
out of season, he urges that you "come under the blood." His face is
tense, his brow wrinkled, his eyes strained, his voice raucous, his
whole demeanor full of worry over the salvation of others.

Another friend is a Seventh Day Adventist, who is full of zeal for the
declaration of the "Third Angel's Message," for he believes that
only by heeding it, keeping sacred the hours from sunset on Friday
to Saturday sunset, in accordance with his reading of the fourth
commandment, and also believing in the speedy second coming of Christ,
can one's soul's salvation be attained.

The Baptist is assured that his mode of baptism--complete
immersion--is the only one that satisfies the demands of heaven, and
the more rigorous members of the sect refuse communion with those
who have not obeyed, as they see the command. The members of the
"Christian" Church--as the disciples of Alexander Campbell term
themselves--while they assent that they are tied to no creed except
the New Testament, demand immersion as a prerequisite to membership in
their body. The Methodist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Nazarene,
and many others, are "evangelical" in their belief, as is a large
portion of the Church of England, and its American offshoot, both of
which are known as the Episcopal Church. Another portion, however, of
this church is known as "ritualistic," and the two branches in England
recently became so involved in a heated discussion as to the propriety
of certain of their bishops partaking in official deliberations with
ministers of the other, but outside, evangelistic churches, that for a
time it seemed as if the whole Episcopal Church would be disrupted by
the fierceness and anger gendered in the differences of opinion.

To my own mind, all this worry was much ado about nothing. Each man's
brain and conscience must guide him in matters of this kind, and the
worry, fret, stew, evolved out of the matter, seem to me a proof that
real religion had little to do with it.

Recently one good brother came to me with tears in his voice, if not
in his eyes, worried seriously as to my own religious belief because I
had asserted in a public address that I believed the earnest prayer
of a good Indian woman reached the ear of God as surely as did my own
prayers, or those of any man, woman, minister, or priest living. To
him the only effective prayers were "evangelical" prayers--whatever
that may mean--and he was deeply distressed and fearfully worried
because I could not see eye to eye with him in this matter. And a
dear, good woman, who heard a subsequent discussion of the subject,
was so worried over my attitude that she felt impelled to assure me
when I left that "she would pray for me."

I have friends who are zealous Roman Catholics, and a number of them
are praying that I may soon enter the folds of "Mother Church," and
yet my Unitarian and Universalist friends wonder why I retain my
membership in any "orthodox" church. On the other hand, my New Thought
friends declare that I belong to them by the spirit of the messages I
have given to the world. Then, too, my Theosophist friends--and I have
many--present to me, with a force I do not attempt to controvert, the
doctrine of the Universal Brotherhood of Mankind, and urge upon
me acceptance of the comforting and helpful doctrine, to them, of
Reincarnation.

Not long prior to this writing a good earnest man buttonholed me
and held me tight for over an hour, while he outlined his own slight
divergencies from the teachings of the Methodist Church, to which he
belongs, and his interpretation of the symbolism of Scripture, none
of which had the slightest interest to me. In our conversation, he
expressed himself as quite willing--please note the condescension--to
allow me the privilege of supposing the Catholic was honest and
sincere in his faith and belief, _but he really could not for one
moment_ allow the same to the Christian Scientist, who, from his
standpoint, denied the atonement and the Divinity of Christ. I suppose
if he ever picks up this booklet and reads what I am now going
to write, he will regard me as a reprobate and lost beyond the
possibility of salvation. Nevertheless, I wish to put on record that
I regard his attitude as one of intolerance, bigotry, fanaticism, and
impudence--sheer, unadulterated impertinence. Who made him the judge
of the thoughts and acts of other men's inner lives? Who gave to him
the wisdom and power of discernment to know that _he_ was right and
these others wrong? Poor, arrogant fool. His worries were not the
result of genuine affection and deep human sympathy, the irrepressible
and uncontrollable desires and longings of his heart to bring
others into the full light of God's love, but of his overweening
self-confidence in his own wisdom and judgment. And I say this in no
personal condemnation of him, for I have now even forgotten who it
was, but in condemnation of the spirit in which he and all his ilk
ever act.

Hence, my dear reader, if you are of his class, I say to you
earnestly: Don't worry about other people's salvation. It may be they
are nearer saved than you are. No man can' be "worried" into accepting
anything, even though _you_ may deem it the only Truth. I have known
men whom others regarded as agnostics who had given more study to the
question of personal religion than any ten of their critics. I can
recall three--all of whom were men of wonderful mentality and great
earnestness of purpose. John Burroughs's first essays were written
for his own soul's welfare--the results of his long-continued mental
struggles for light upon the subject. Major J.W. Powell, the organizer
and director for many years of the United States Geological Survey and
Bureau of American Ethnology, was brought up by a father and mother
whose intense longing was that their son should be a Methodist
preacher. The growing youth wished to please his parents, but was
also compelled to satisfy his own conscience. The more he studied the
creeds and doctrines of Methodism, the less he felt he could accept
them, and much to the regret of his parents, he refused to enter the
ministry. Yet, in relating the story to me, he asserted that his whole
life had been one long agony of earnest study to find the highest
truth. Taking me into his library, where there were several extended
shelves filled from end to end with the ponderous tomes of the two
great government bureaus that he controlled, he said: "Most people
regard this as my life-work, and outwardly it is. Yet I say to you in
all sincerity that the real, inner, secret force working through all
this, has been that I might satisfy my own soul on the subject of
religion." Then, picking up two small volumes, he said: "In these two
books I have recorded the results of my years of agonizing struggle.
I don't suppose ten men have ever read them through, or, perhaps,
ever will, but these are the real story of the chief work of my inner
life."

I am one of the few men who have read both these books with scrupulous
care, and yet were it not for what my friend told me of their profound
significance to him, I should scarcely have been interested enough in
their contents to read them through. At the same time, I _know_ that
the men who, from the standpoint of their professionally religious
complacency would have condemned Major Powell, never spent
one-thousandth part the time, nor felt one ten-thousandth the real
solicitude that he did about seeking "the way, the truth, and the
life."

Another friend in Chicago was Dr. M.H. Lackersteen, openly denounced
as an agnostic, and even as an infidel, by some zealous sectaries.
Yet Dr. Lackersteen had personally translated the whole of the Greek
Testament, and several other sacred books of the Hebrews and Hindoos,
in his intense desire to satisfy the demands of his own soul for
the Truth. He was the soul of honor, the very personification of
sincerity, and as much above some of his critics--whom I well knew--in
these virtues, as they were above the scum of the slums.

The longer I live and study men the more I am compelled to believe
that religion is a personal matter between oneself and God and is more
of the spirit than most people have yet conceived. It is well known
to those who have read my books and heard my lectures on the Old
Franciscan Missions of California, that I revere the memory of Padres
Junipero Serra, Palou, Crespi, Catala, Peyri, and others of the
founders of these missions. I have equal veneration for the goodness
of many Catholic priests, nuns, and laymen of to-day. Yet I am not
a Catholic, though zealous sectaries of Protestantism--even of the
church to which I am supposed to belong--sometimes fiercely assail
me for my open commendation of these men of that faith. They are
_worried_ lest I lean too closely towards Catholicism, and ultimately
become one of that fold. Others, who hear my good words in favor of
what appeals to me as noble and uplifting in the lives of those of
other faiths of which they do not approve, worry over and condemn my
"breadth" of belief. Indeed, I have many friends who give themselves
an immense lot of altogether unnecessary worry about this matter. They
have labelled themselves according to some denominational tag, and
accept some form of belief that, to them, seems incontrovertible and
satisfactory. Many of them are praying for me, and each that I may see
the TRUTH from _his_ standpoint. For their prayers I am grateful. I
cannot afford to lose the spirit of love behind and in every one of
them. But for the _worry_ about me in their minds, I have neither
respect, regard, toleration, nor sympathy. I don't want it, can do
without it, and I resent its being there. To each and all of them I
say firmly: _Quit Your Worrying_ about my religion, or want of it.
I am in the hands of the same loving God that you are. I have the
promise of God's Guiding Spirit as much as you have. I have listened
respectfully and with an earnest and sincere desire to see and know
the Truth, to all you have said, and now I want to be left alone. I
have come to exclaim with Browning in _Rabbi Ben Ezra_:

Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me. We all surmise,
They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?

For myself I have concluded that no one shall choose my religion for
me, and all the worrying in the world shall not change my attitude.

And it is to the worrying of my friends that they owe this state of
mind. For this reason, I found myself one day counting up the number
of people of different beliefs who had solemnly promised to pray for
me. There were Methodists, Campbellites, Baptists, Roman Catholics,
Episcopalians, Seventh Day Adventists, Presbyterians, Nazarenes,
Holy Rollers, and others. Then the query arose: Whose prayers will be
answered on my behalf? Each is sure that _his_ are the ones that can
be effective; yet their prayers differ; they are, to some degree,
antagonistic, and insofar as they petition that I become one of their
particular fold, they nullify each other, as it is utterly impossible
that I accept the specific form of faith of each. The consequent
result in my own mind is that as I cannot possibly become what all
these good people desire I should be, as their desires and prayers for
me controvert each other, I must respectfully decline to be bound by
any one of them. I _must_ and _will_ do my own choosing. Hence all the
worry on my behalf is energy, strength, and effort wasted.

Let me repeat, then, to the worrier about the salvation of others: You
are in a poor business. _Quit Your Worrying_. Hands off! This is none
of your concern. Believe as little or as much and what you will for
your own soul's salvation, but do not put forth _your_ conceptions as
the _only_ conceptions possible of Divine Truth before another soul
who may have an immeasurably larger vision than you have. Oh,
the pitiableness of man's colossal conceit, the arrogance of his
ignorance. As if the God of the Universe were so small that one
paltry, finite man could contain in his pint measure of a mind all the
ocean of His power, knowledge, and love. Let your small and wretched
worries go. Have a little larger faith in the Love of the Infinite
One. Tenderly love and trust those whose welfare you seek, and trust
God at the same time, but don't worry when you see the dear ones
walking in a path you have not chosen for them. Remember your own
ignorance, your own frailties, your own errors, your own mistakes, and
then frankly and honestly, fearlessly and directly ask yourself
the question if you dare to take upon your own ignorant self the
responsibility of seeking to control and guide another living soul as
to his eternal life.

Brother, Sister, the job is too big for you. It takes God to do that,
and you are not yet even a perfect human being. Hence, while I long
for all spiritual good for my sons and daughters, and for my friends,
and I pray for them, it is in a large way, without any interjection of
my own decisions and conclusions as to what will be good for them.
I have no fears as I leave them thus in God's hand, and regard every
worry as sinful on my part, and injurious to them. I have no desire
that they should accept my particular brand of faith or belief. While
I believe absolutely in that which I accept for the guidance of my own
life, _I would not fetter their souls with my belief if I could_. They
are in wiser, better, larger, more loving Hands than mine. And if
I would not thus fetter my children and friends, I dare not seek to
fetter others. My business is to live my own religion to the utmost.
If I must worry, I will worry about that, though, as I think my
readers are well aware by now, I do not believe in any kind of worry
on any subject whatever.

Hence, let me again affirm in concluding this chapter, I regard worry
about the religion of others as unwarrantable on account of our own
ignorances as to their peculiar needs, as well as of God's methods of
supplying those needs. It is also a useless expenditure of strength,
energy, and affection, for, if God leads, your worry cannot possibly
affect the one so led. It is also generally an irritant to the one
worried over. Even though he may not formulate it into words he feels
that it is an interference with his own inner life, a nagging that
he resents, and, therefore, it does him far more harm than good;
and, finally, it is an altogether indefensible attempt to saddle
upon another soul your own faith or belief, which may be altogether
unsuitable or inadequate to the needs of that soul.

There is still one other form of worry connected with the subject
of religion. Many a good man and woman worries over the apparent
well-being and success of those whom he, she, accounts wicked! They
are seen to flourish as a green bay tree, or as a well-watered garden,
and this seems to be unfair, unjust, and unwise on the part of the
powers that govern the universe. If good is desirable, people ought
to be encouraged to it by material success--so reason these officially
good wiseacres, who subconsciously wish to dictate to God how He
should run His world.

How often we hear the question: "Why is it the wicked prosper so?" or
"He's such a bad man and yet everything he does prospers." Holy Writ
is very clear on this subject. The sacred writer evidently was well
posted on the tendency of human nature to worry and concern itself
about the affairs of others, hence his injunction:

Fret not thyself because of evil doers.

In other words, it's none of your business. And I am inclined to
believe that a careful study of the Bible would reveal to every
busybody who worries over the affairs of others that he himself has
enough to do to attend to himself, and that his worry anyhow is a
ridiculous, absurd, and senseless piece of supererogation, and rather
a proof of human conceit and vanity than of true concern for the
spiritual good of others.




CHAPTER XIV

AMBITION AND WORRY


Some forms of ambition are sure and certain developers and feeders of
worry and fretful distress, and should be guarded against with jealous
care. We hear a great deal from our physicians of the germs of disease
that seize upon us and infect our whole being, but not all the disease
germs that ever infected a race are so demoralizing to one's peace and
joy as are the germs of such deadly mental diseases as those of envy,
malice, covetousness, ambition, and the like. Ambition, like wine, is
a mocker. It is a vain deluder of men. It takes an elevated position
and beckons to you to rise, that you may be seen and flattered of men.
It does not say: "Gain strength and power, wisdom and virtue, so that
men will place you upon the pedestal of their veneration, respect,
and love," but it bids you seize the "spotlight" and hold it, and no
sooner are you there than it begins to pester you, as with a hundred
thousand hornets, flying around and stinging you, with doubts and
questionings as to whether your fellows see you in this elevated
place, whether they really discern your worth, your beauty, your
shining qualities; and, furthermore, it quickens your hearing, and
bids you strain to listen to what they say about you, and as you do
so, you are pricked, stabbed, wounded by their slighting and jeering
remarks, their scornful comments upon your impertinent and impudent
arrogance at daring to take such a place, and their open denial of
your possession of any of the qualities which would entitle you to so
honored a position in the eyes of men.

Then, too, it must be recalled that, when fired with the desires of
this mocker, ambition, one is inclined, in his selfish absorption, to
be ruthless in his dealings with others. It is so easy to trample upon
others when a siren is beckoning you to climb higher, and your ears
are eagerly listening to her seductive phrases. With her song in
your ears, you cannot hear the wails of anguish of others, upon whose
rights and life you trample, the manly rebukes of those you wound,
or the stern remonstrances of those who bid you heed your course.
Ambition blinds and deafens, and, alas, calluses the heart, kills
comradeship, drives away friendship in its eager selfishness, and in
so doing, lets in a flood of worries that ever beset its victims. They
may not always be in evidence while there is the momentary triumph of
climbing, but they are there waiting, ready to teeter the pedestal,
whisper of its unsure and unstable condition, call attention to those
who are digging around its foundations, and to the fliers in the air,
who threaten to hurl down bombs and completely destroy it.

Phaeton begged that his father, Phoebus Apollo, allow him to drive
the flaming chariot of day through the heavens, and, in spite of all
warnings and cautions, insisted upon his power and ability. Though
instructed and informed as to the great dangers he evoked, he seized
the reins with delight, stood up in the chariot, and urged on the
snorting steeds to furious speed. Soon conscious of a lighter load
than usual, the steeds dashed on, tossing the chariot as a ship at
sea, and rushed headlong from the traveled road of the middle zone.
The Great and Little Bear were scorched, and the Serpent that coils
around the North Pole was warmed to life. Now filled with fear and
dread, Phaeton lost self-control, and looked repentant to the goal
which he could never reach. The unrestrained steeds dashed hither and
thither among the stars, and reaching the Earth, set fire to trees,
cities, harvests, mountains. The air became hot and lurid. The rivers,
springs, and snowbanks were dried up. The Earth then cried out in her
agony to Jupiter for relief, and he launched a thunderbolt at the now
cowed and broken-hearted driver, which not only struck him from the
seat he had dishonored, but also out of existence.

The old mythologists were no fools. They saw the worries, the dangers,
the sure end of ambition. They wrote their cautions and warnings
against it in this graphic story. Why will men and women, for the sake
of an uncertain and unsure goal, tempt the Fates, and, at the same
time, surely bring upon themselves a thousand unnecessary worries
that sting, nag, taunt, fret, and distress? Far better seek a goal of
certainty, a harbor of sureness, in the doing of kindly deeds, noble
actions, unselfish devotion to the uplift of others. In this mad rush
of ambitious selfishness, such a life aim may _seem_ chimerical, yet
it is the only aim that will reach, attain, endure. For all earthly
fame, ambitious attainment, honor, glory is evanescent and temporary.
Like the wealth of the miser, it must be left behind. There is no
pocket in any shroud yet devised which will convey wealth across the
River of Death, and no man's honors and fame but that fade in the
clear light of the Spirit that shines in the land beyond.

Then, ambitious friend, quit your worrying, readjust your aim, trim
your lamp for another and better guest, live for the uplift of others,
seek to give help and strength to the needy, bring sunshine to the
darkened, give of your abundance of spirit and exuberance to those who
have little or none, and thus will you lay up treasure within your own
soul which will convert hell into heaven, and give you joy forever.

So long as men and women believe that happiness lies in outdistancing,
surpassing their fellows in exterior or material things, they cannot
help but be subjects to worry. To determine to gain a larger fortune
than that possessed by another man is a sure invitation to worry
to enter into possession of one's soul. Who has not seen the vain
struggles, the distress, the worry of unsatisfied ambitions that would
have amounted to nothing had they been gratified? In Women's Clubs--as
well as men's--many a heart-ache is caused because some other woman
gains an office, is elected to a position, is appointed on a committee
you had coveted.

The remedy for this kind of worry is to change the aim of life.
Instead of making position, fame, the attainment of fortune, office, a
fine house, an automobile, the object of existence, make _the doing
of something worthy a noble manhood or womanhood the object of your
ambition_. Strive to make yourself _worthy_ to be the best president
your club has ever had; endeavor to be the finest equipped, mentally,
for the work that is to be done, _whether you are chosen to do it or
not_, and keep on, and on, and still on, finding your joy in the work,
in the benefit it is to yourself, in the power it is storing up within
you.

Then, as sure as the sun shines, the time will come when you will be
chosen to do the needed work. "Your own will come to you." Nothing can
hinder it. It will flow as certainly into your hands as the waters of
the river flow into the sea.




CHAPTER XV

ENVY AND WORRY


Envy is a prolific source of worry. Once allow this demon of unrest
to fasten itself in one's vitals, and worry claims every waking
hour. Envy is that peculiar demon of discontent that cannot see
the abilities, attainments, achievements, or possessions of another
without malicious determination to belittle, deride, make light of, or
absolutely deny their existence, while all the time covetously craving
them for itself. Andrew Tooke pictures Envy as a vile female:

A deadly paleness in her cheek was seen;
Her meager skeleton scarce cased with skin;
Her looks awry; an everlasting scowl
Sits on her brow; her teeth deform'd and foul;
Her breast had gall more than her breast could hold;
Beneath her tongue coats of poison roll'd;
No smile e'er smooth'd her furrow'd brow but those
Which rose from laughing at another's woes;
Her eyes were strangers to the sweets of sleep,
Devouring spite for ever waking keep;
She sees bless'd men with vast success crown'd,
Their joys distract her, and their glories wound;
She kills abroad, herself's consum'd at home,
And her own crimes are her perpetual martyrdom.

Ever watching, with bloodshot eyes, the good things of others, she
hates them for their possessions, longs to possess them herself,
lets her covetousness gnaw hourly at her very vitals, and yet, in
conversation with others, slays with slander, vile innuendo, and
falsehood, the reputation of those whose virtues she covets.

As Robert Pollock wrote of one full of envy:

It was his earnest work and daily toil
With lying tongue, to make the noble seem
Mean as himself.

*       *       *       *       *

Whene'er he heard,
As oft he did, of joy and happiness,
And great prosperity, and rising worth,
'Twas like a wave of wormwood o'er his soul
Rolling its bitterness.

Aye! and he drank in great draughts of this bitter flood, holding it
in his mouth, tasting its foul and biting qualities until his whole
being seemed saturated with it, hating it, dreading it, suffering
every moment while doing it, yet enduring it, because of his envy at
the good of others.

Few there are, who, at some time or other in their lives, do not have
a taste, at least, of the stinging bite of envy. Girls are envious of
each other's good looks, clothes, possessions, houses, friends; boys
of the strength, skill, ability, popularity of others; women of other
women, men of other men, just as when they were boys and girls.

One of the strongest words the great Socrates ever wrote was against
envy. He said:

Envy is the daughter of pride, the author of murder and
revenge, the beginner of secret sedition, the perpetual
tormentor of virtue. Envy is the filthy slime of the soul; a
venom, a poison, a quicksilver, which consumeth the flesh, and
drieth up the marrow of the bones.

And history clearly shows that the wise philosopher stated facts.
Caligula slew his brother because he possessed a beauty that led him
to be more esteemed and favored than he. Dionysius, the tyrant, was
vindictive and cruel to Philoxenius, the musician, because he could
sing; and with Plato, the philosopher, because he could dispute,
better than himself. Even the great Cambyses slew his brother,
Smerdis, because he was a stronger and better bowman than himself or
any of his party. It was envy that led the courtiers of Spain to crave
and seek the destruction of Columbus, and envy that set a score of
enemies at the heels of Cortes, the conqueror of Peru.

It is a fearful and vindictive devil, is this devil of envy, and he
who yields to it, who once allows it admittance to the citadel of his
heart, will soon learn that every subsequent waking and even sleeping
moment is one of worry and distress.




CHAPTER XVI

DISCONTENT AND WORRY


Closely allied to envy is discontent. These are blood relations, and
both are prolific sources of worry. And lest there are those who
think because I have revealed, in the preceding chapter, the demon of
worry--envy--as one that attacks the minds of the great and mighty, it
does not enter the hearts of everyday people, let me quote, entire, an
article and a poem recently written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox in _The Los
Angeles Examiner_. The discontent referred to clearly comes from envy.
Some one has blond tresses, while she has black. This arouses her
envy. She is envious because another's eyes are blue, while hers
are brown; another is tall, while she is small; etc., etc. There is
nothing, indeed, that she cannot weep and worry over:

There is a certain girl I know, a pretty little elf,
Who spends almost her entire thoughts in pity for herself.

Her glossy tresses, raven black, cause her to weep a pond--
She is so sorry for herself because they are not blond.

Her eyes, when dry, are very bright and very brown, 'tis true,
But they are almost always wet, because they are not blue.