them, without, in one single degree, improving their own condition
or hastening the repair of the disaster. What folly; what more than
childish foolishness.

A child may be excused for its impatience and petulance for it has not
yet learned the inevitable facts of life--such as that breaks must be
repaired, tires must be made so that they will not leak, and that the
gasoline tank cannot be empty if the machine is to run. But a man, a
woman, is supposed to have learned these incontrovertible facts, and
should, at the same time, have learned acquiesence in them.

A train is delayed; one has an important engagement; worry seems
inevitable and excusable. But is it? Where is the use? Will it replace
the destroyed bridge, renew the washed out track, repair the broken
engine? How much better to submit to the inevitable with graceful
acceptance of the fact, than to fret, stew, worry, and at the same
time, irritate everyone around you.

How serenely Nature rebukes the impatience of the fretful worrier. A
man plants corn, wheat, barley, potatoes--or trees, that take five,
seven years to come to bearing, such as the orange, olive, walnut,
date, etc. Let him fret ever so much, worry all he likes, chafe and
fret every hour; let him go and dig up his seeds or plants to urge
their upgrowing; let him even swear in his impatient worry and
threaten to smash all his machinery, discharge his men, and turn
his stock loose; Nature goes on her way, quietly, unmoved, serenely,
unhurried, undisturbed by the folly of the one creature of earth who
is so senseless as to worry--viz., man.

Many a man's hair has turned gray, and many a woman's brow and
cheeks have become furrowed because of fretful, impatient worry over
something that could not be changed, or hastened, or improved.

My conception of life is that manhood, womanhood, should rise superior
to any and all conditions and circumstances. Whatever happens, Spirit
should be supreme, superior, in control. And until we learn that
lesson, life, so far, has failed. Inasmuch as we do learn it, life has
become a success.




CHAPTER XXII

THE WORRIES OF ANTICIPATION


He crosses every bridge before he comes to it, is a graphic and
proverbial rendering of a description of the man who worries in
anticipation. Something, sure, is going to happen. He is always
fearful, not of what is, but of what is going to be. For twenty years
he has managed to live and pay his rent, but at the beginning of each
month he begins afresh to worry where "next month's rent is going
to come from." He's collected his bills fairly well for a business
life-time, but if a debtor fails to send in his check on the very day
he begins to worry and fear lest he fail to receive it. His wife has
given him four children, but at the coming of the fifth he is sure
something extraordinarily painful and adverse is going to happen.

He sees--possibly, here, I should say, _she_ sees--their son climbing
a tree. She is sure he will fall and break a leg, an arm, or his neck.
Her boy mustn't ride the horse lest he fall and injure himself; if he
goes to swim he is surely in danger of being drowned, and she could
never allow him or his sister to row in a boat lest it be overturned.
The child must be watched momentarily, lest it fall out of the window,
search out a sharp knife, swallow poison, or do some irreparable
damage to the bric-a-brac.

Here let me relate an incident the truth of which is vouched for, and
which clearly illustrates the difference between the attitude of worry
and that of trust. One day, when Flattich, a pious minister of the
Wurtemberg, was seated in his armchair, one of his foster children
fell out of a second-story window, right before him, to the pavement
below. He calmly ordered his daughter to go and bring up the child.
On doing so it was found the little one had sustained no injury.
A neighbor, however, aroused by the noise, came in and reproached
Flattich for his carelessness and inattention. While she was thus
remonstrating, her own child, which she had brought with her, fell
from the bench upon which she had seated it, and broke its arm. "Do
you see, good woman," said the minister, "if you imagine yourself to
be the sole guardian of your child, then you must constantly carry it
in your arms. I commend my children to God; and even though they then
fall, they are safer than were I to devote my whole time and attention
to them."

Those who anticipate evils for their children too often seem to bring
down upon their loved ones the very evils they are afraid of. And one
of the greatest lessons of life, and one that brings immeasurable
and uncountable joys when learned, is, that Nature--the great
Father-Mother of us all--is kindly disposed to us. We need not be so
alarmed, so fearful, so anticipatory of evil at her hands.

Charles Warren Stoddard used to tell of the great dread Mark Twain was
wont to feel, during the exhaustion and reaction he felt at the close
of each of his lectures, lest he should become incapable of further
writing and lecturing and therefore become dependent upon his friends
and die a pauper. How wonderfully he conquered this demon of perpetual
worry all those who know his life are aware; how that, when his
publisher failed he took upon himself a heavy financial burden, for
which he was in no way responsible, went on a lecture tour around the
world and paid every cent of it, and finally died with his finances in
a most prosperous condition.

The anticipatory worries of others are just as senseless, foolish and
absurd as were those of Mark Twain, and it is possible for every man
to overcome them, even as did he.

The cloud we anticipate seldom, if ever, comes, and then, generally,
in a different direction from where we sought it. Time spent on
looking for the cloud, and figuring how much of injury it will do
us had better be utilized in garnering the hay crop, bringing in the
lambs, or hauling warm fodder and bedding for them.

There is another side, however, to this worrying anticipation of
troubles. The ancient philosophers recognized it. Lucan wrote: "The
very fear of approaching evil has driven many into peril."

There are those who believe that the very concentration of thought
upon a possible evil will bring to pass the peculiar arrangement of
circumstances that makes the evil. Of this belief I am not competent
to speak, but I am fully assured that it is far from helpful to be
contemplating the possibility of evil. In my own life I have found
that worrying over evils in anticipation has not prevented their
coming, and, on the other hand, that where I have boldly faced the
situation, without fear and its attendant worries, the evil has fled.

Hence, whether worries in hand, or worries to come, worries real or
worries imaginary, the wise, sane and practical course is to kill them
all and thus _Quit Your Worrying_.




CHAPTER XXIII

HOW OUR WORRY AFFECTS OTHERS


If worry affected merely ourselves it would be bad enough, but we
could tolerate it more than we do. For it is one of the infernal
characteristics of worry that our manifestation of it invariably
affects others as injuriously as it affects ourselves.

An employer who worries his employees never gets the good work out
of them as does the one who has sense enough to keep them happy,
good-natured and contented. I was lecturing once for a large
corporation. I had two colleagues, who "spelled me" every hour. For
much of the time we had no place to rest, work or play between our
lectures. Our engagement lasted the better part of a year, and the
result was that, during that period where our reasonable needs were
unprovided for, we all failed to give as good work as we were capable
of. We were unnecessarily worried by inadequate provision and our
employers suffered. Henry Ford, and men of his type have learned this
lesson. Men respond rapidly to those who do not worry them. Governor
Hunt and Warden Sims, of Arizona, have learned the same fact in
dealing with prisoners of the State Penitentiary. The less the men
are "worried" by unnecessarily harsh treatment, absurd and cruel
restrictions, curtailment of natural rights, the better they act, the
easier they are liable to reform and make good.

Dr. Musgrove to his _Nervous Breakdowns_, tells a story of two
commanders which well illustrates this point:

In a certain war two companies of men had to march an equal
distance in order to meet at a particular spot. The one
arrived in perfect order, and with few signs of exhaustion,
although the march had been an arduous one. The other company
reached the place utterly done up and disorganised. It was all
a question of leadership; the captain of the first company
had known his way and kept his men in good order, while the
captain of the second company had never been sure of himself,
and had harassed his subordinates with a constant succession
of orders and counter-orders, until they had hardly known
whether they were on their heads or their heels. That was why
they arrived completely demoralised.

In war, as in peace, it is not work that kills so much as worry.
A general may make his soldiers work to the point of exhaustion as
Napoleon often did, yet have their almost adoring worship. But the
general who worries his men gets neither their good will nor good
work.

A worrying mother can keep a whole house in a turmoil, from father
down to the latest baby. The growing boys and girls soon learn to
dread the name of "home," and would rather be in school, in the
backyard playing, in the attic, at the neighbors, or in the streets,
anywhere, than within the sound of their mother's worrying voice,
or frowning countenance. A worrying husband can drive his wife
distracted, and vice versa. I was dining not long ago with a couple
that, from outward appearance, had everything that heart could desire
to make them happy. They were young, healthy, had a good income, were
_both_ engaged in work they liked, yet the husband worried the
wife constantly about trifles. If she wished to set the table in a
particular way he worried because she didn't do it some other way; if
she drove one of their autos he worried because she didn't take the
other; and when she wore a spring-day flowery kind of a hat he worried
her because his mother never wore any other than a black hat. The
poor woman was distracted by the absolute absurdities, frivolities and
inconsequentialities of his worries, yet he didn't seem to have sense
to see what he was doing. So I gave him a plain practical talk--as I
had been drawn into a discussion of the matter without any volition on
my part--and urged him to quit irritating his wife so foolishly and so
unnecessarily.

Some teachers worry their pupils until the latter fail to do the work
they are competent to do; and the want of success of many an ambitious
teacher can often be attributed to his, her, worrying disposition.
Remember, therefore, that when you worry you are making others unhappy
as well as yourself, you are putting a damper, a blight, upon other
lives as well as your own, you are destroying the efficiency of other
workers as well as your own, you are robbing others of the joy of life
which God intended them freely to possess. So that for the sake of
others, as well as your own, it becomes an imperative duty that you

QUIT YOUR WORRYING.




CHAPTER XXIV

WORRY VERSUS INDIFFERENCE


The aim and object of all striving in life should be to grow more
human, more humane, less selfish, more helpful to our fellows. Any
system of life that fails to meet this universal need is predestined
to failure. When, therefore, I urge upon my readers that they quit
their worrying about their husbands or wives, sons and daughters,
neighbors and friends, the wicked and the good, I do not mean that
they are to harden their hearts and become indifferent to their
welfare. God forbid! No student of the human heart, of human life, and
of the Bible can long ignore the need of a caution upon these lines.
The sacred writer knew what he was talking about when he spoke of the
human heart as deceitful and desperately wicked. It is deceitful or it
would never blind people as it does to the inutility, the futility of
much of their goodness. A goodness that is wrapped up in a napkin, and
lies unused for the benefit of others, rots and becomes a putrid mass
of corruption. It can only remain good by being unselfishly used for
the good of others, and to prove that the human heart is desperately
wicked one needs only to look at the suffering endured by mankind
unnecessarily--suffering that organized society ought to prevent and
render impossible.

The parable of the lost sheep was written to give us this needful
lesson. The shepherd, when he found one of his sheep gone, did not sit
down and wring his hands in foolish and useless worry as to what would
happen to the sheep, the dangers that would beset it, the thorns,
the precipices, the wolves. Nor did he count over the times he had
cautioned the sheep not to get away from its fellows. Granted that
it was conceited, self-willed, refused to listen to counsel,
disobedient--the main fact in the mind of the shepherd was that it was
lost, unprotected, in danger, afraid, cold, hungry, longing for the
sheepfold, the companionship of its fellows and the guardianship of
the shepherd. Hence, he went out eagerly and sympathetically, and
searched until he found it and brought it back to shelter.

This, then, should be the spirit of those who have needed my
caution and advice to quit their worrying about their loved ones and
others--Do not worry, but do not, under any consideration, become
hard-hearted, careless, or indifferent. Better by far preserve your
interest and the human tenderness that leads you to the useless and
needless expenditure of energy and sympathy in worry than that you
should let your loved ones suffer without any care, thought, or
endeavor on their behalf. But do not let it be a sympathy that leads
to worry. Let it be helpful, stimulating, directive, energizing in the
good. Overcome evil with good. Resist evil and it will flee from you.
So long as those you love are absorbed in the things that in the past
have led you to worry over them, be tender and sympathetic with them,
surround them with your holy and helpful love.

Jesus was tender and compassionate with all who were sick or diseased
in body or mind. He was never angry with any, save the proud and
self-righteous Pharisees. He tenderly forgave the adulterous woman,
justified the publican and never lectured or rebuked those who came to
have their bodily and mental infirmities removed by him. Let us then
be tender with the erring and the sinful, rather than censorious,
and full of rebuke. Is it not the better way to point out the
right--overcome the evil with the good, and thus bind our erring
loved ones more firmly to ourselves. Surely our own errors, failures,
weaknesses and sins ought to have taught us this lesson.

In the bedroom of a friend where I recently slept, was a card on
which was illuminated these words, which bear particularly upon this
subject:

The life that has not known and accepted sorrow is strangely
crude and untaught; it can neither help nor teach, for it has
never learned. The life that has spurned the lesson of sorrow,
or failed to read it aright, is cold and hard. But the life
that has been disciplined by sorrow is courageous and full of
holy and gentle love.

And it is this holy, gentle, and courageous love that we need to
exercise every day towards those who require it, rather than the
worry that frets still more, irritates, and widens the gulf already
existent. So, reader, don't worry, but help, sympathetically and
lovingly, and above all, don't become indifferent, hard-hearted and
selfish.




CHAPTER XXV

WORRIES AND HOBBIES


Though these words are much alike in sound they have no sympathy
one with another. Put them in active operation and they rush at each
other's throats far worse than Allies and Germans are now fighting.
They strive for a death grip, and as soon as one gets hold he hangs on
to the end--if he can. Yet, as in all conflicts, the right is sure to
win in an equal combat, the right of the hobby is absolutely certain
to win over the wrong of the worry.

Webster defines a hobby as: "A subject or plan which one is constantly
setting off," or "a favorite and ever recurring theme of discourse,
thought, or effort," but the editor of _The Century Dictionary_ has
a better definition, more in accord with modern thought, viz., "That
which a person persistently pursues or dwells upon with zeal or
delight, as if riding a horse."

Are you cursed by the demon of worry? Has he got a death grip on your
throat? Do you want to be freed from his throttling assaults? If
so, get a hobby, the more mentally occupying the better, and ride it
earnestly, sincerely, furiously. Let it be what it will, it will
far more than pay in the end, when you find yourself free from the
nightmare of worry that has so relentlessly ridden you for so long.
Collect bugs, old china, Indian baskets, Indian blankets, pipes,
domestic implements, war paraphanalia, photographs, butterflies; make
an herbarium of the flowers of your State; collect postage stamps, old
books, first editions; go in for extra-illustrating books; pick up and
classify all the stray phrases you hear--do anything that will occupy
your mind to the exclusion of worry.

And let me here add a thought--the more unselfish you can make your
hobby the better it will be for you. Perhaps I can put it even in a
better way yet: The less your hobby is entered into with the purely
personal purpose of pleasing yourself, and the more actively you can
make it beneficial, helpful, joy-giving to others, the more potent
for good it will be in aiding you to get rid of your worries. He who
blesses another is thrice blessed, for he not only blesses himself by
the act, but brings upon himself the blessing of the recipient and of
Almighty God, with the oft-added blessing of those who learn of
the good deed and breathe a prayer of commendation for him. In San
Francisco there is a newspaper man who writes in a quaint, peculiar,
simple, yet subtle fashion, who signs himself "K.C.B." During the
Panama-Pacific Exposition one of his hobbies was to plan to take there
all the poor youngsters of the streets, the newsboys, the little ones
in hospitals, the incurables, the down-and-outers of the work-house
and poor-farm, and finally, the almost forgotten old men and women of
the almshouses.

I saw strong men weep with deep emotion at the procession of
automobiles conveying the happy though generally silent throngs on
one of these occasions, and "K.C.B." must have felt the showers of
blessings that were sent in his direction from those who saw and
appreciated his beautiful helpfulness.

There is nothing to hinder any man, woman, youth or maiden from doing
exactly the same kind of thing, with the same spirit, and bringing
a few hours of happiness to the needy, thus driving worry out of the
mind, putting it _hors de combat_, so that it need never again rise
from the field.

Every blind asylum, children's hospital, slum, old lady's home, old
man's home, almshouse, poor-farm, work-house, insane asylum, prison,
and a thousand other centers where the poor, needy, sick and afflicted
gather, has its lonely hearts that long for cherishing, aching brows
that need to be soothed, pain to be alleviated; and there is no
panacea so potent in removing the worries of our own life as to engage
earnestly in removing the positive and active ills of others.

People occasionally ask me if I have any hobby that has helped me ward
off the attacks of worry. I do not believe I have ever answered this
question as fully as I might have done, so I will attempt to do so
now. One of my first hobbies was food reform and hygienic living. When
I was little more than twelve years of age I became a vegetarian
and for nine years lived the life pretty rigorously. I have always
believed that simpler, plainer living than most of us indulge in, more
open air life, sleeping, working, living out of doors, more active,
physical exercise of a useful character, would be beneficial. Then I
became a student of memory culture. Professor William Stokes of
the Royal Polytechnic Institution became my friend, and for years
I studied his system of Mnemonics, or as it was generally termed
"Artificial Memory." Then I taught it for a number of years, and
evolved from it certain fundamental principles upon which I have
largely based the cultivation of my own memory and mentality, and for
which I can never be sufficiently thankful. Then I desired to be a
public speaker. I became a "hobbyist" on pronunciation, enunciation,
purity of voice, phrasing and getting the thought of my own mind in
the best and quickest possible way into the minds of others. For years
I kept a small book in which I jotted down every word, its derivation
and full meaning with which I was not familiar. I studied clear
enunciation by the hour; indeed as I walked through the streets I
recited to myself, aloud, so that I could hear my own enunciation,
such poems as Southey's _Cataract of Lodore_, where almost every word
terminates in "ing." For I had heard many great English and American
speakers whose failure to pronounce this terminal "ing" in such
words as coming, going, etc., used to distress me considerably. Other
exercises were the catches, such as "Peter Piper picks a peck of
pickled peppers," or "Selina Seamstich stitches seven seams slowly,
surely, serenely and slovenly," or "Around a rugged rock a ragged
rascal ran a rural race." Then, too, Professor Stokes had composed a
wonderful yarn about the memory, entitled "My M-made memory medley,
mentioning memory's most marvelous manifestations." This took up as
much as three or four pages of this book, every word beginning with m.
It was a marvelous exercise for lingual development. He also had
"The Far-Famed Fairy Tale of Fenella," and these were constantly
and continuously recited, with scrupulous care as to enunciation. My
father was an old-time conductor of choral and oratorio societies, and
was the leader of a large choir. I had a good alto voice and under his
wise dicipline it was cultivated, and I was a certificated reader of
music at sight before I was ten years old. Then I taught myself
to play the organ, and before I was twenty I was the organist and
choir-master of one of the largest Congregational churches of my
native town, having often helped my father in the past years to drill
and conduct oratorios such as _The Messiah, Elijah, The Creation_,
etc. When I began to speak in public the only special instruction I
had for the cultivation of the voice was a few words from my father to
this effect: Stand before the looking-glass and insist that your face
appear pleasant and agreeable. Speak the sentence you wish to hear.
Listen to your own voice, you can tell as well as anyone else whether
its sound is nasal, harsh, raucous, disagreeable, affected, or in
any way displeasing or unnatural. Insist upon a pure, clear, natural,
pleasing tone, and that's all there is to it. When you appear before
an audience speak to the persons at the further end of the hall and
if they can hear you don't worry about anyone else. Later, when I had
become fairly launched as a public speaker, he came to visit me, and
when I appeared on my platform that night I found scattered around on
the floor, where none could see them but myself, several placards upon
which he had printed in easily-read capitals: Don't shout--keep cool.
Avoid ranting. Make each point clear. Don't ramble, etc.

When I was about fourteen I took up phonography, or stenography as
it is now known. This was an aid in reporting speeches, making notes,
etc., but one of its greatest helps was in the matter of analysing the
sounds of words thus aiding me in their clear enunciation.

At this time I was also a Sunday school teacher, and at sixteen years
of age, a local preacher in the Methodist church. This led to my
becoming an active minister of that denomination after I came to the
United States, and for seven years I was as active as I knew how to
be in the discharge of this work. In my desire to make my preaching
effective and helpful I studied unweariedly and took up astronomy,
buying a three inch telescope, and soon became elected to Fellowship
in the Royal Astronomical Society of England. Then I took up
microscopy, buying the fine microscope from Dr. Dallinger, President
of the Royal Microscopical Society, with which he had done his great
work on bacilli--and which, by-the-way, was later stolen from me--and
I was speedily elected a Fellow of that distinguished Society. A
little later Joseph Le Conte, the beloved geologist of the California
State University, took me under his wing, and set me to work solving
problems in geology, and I was elected, in due time, a Fellow of the
Geological Society of England, a society honored by the counsels of
such men as Tyndall, Murchison, Lyell, and all the great geologists of
the English speaking world.

Just before I left the ministry, in 1889, I took up, with a great deal
of zeal, the study of the poet Browning. I had already yielded to the
charm of Ruskin--whom I personally knew--and Carlyle, but Browning
opened up a new world of elevated thought to me, in which I am still
a happy dweller. In seeking a new vocation I naturally gravitated
towards several lines of thought and study, all of which have
influenced materially my later life, and all of which I pursued with
the devotion accorded only to hobbies. These were I: A deeper study
of Nature, in her larger and manifestations, as the Grand Canyon of
Arizona, the Petrified Forest, the Yosemite Valley, the Big Trees, the
High Sierras, (with their snow-clad summits, glaciers, lakes, canyons,
forests, flora and fauna), the Colorado and Mohave Deserts, the
Colorado River, the Painted Desert, and the many regions upon which I
have written books. II: The social conditions of the submerged tenth,
which led to my writing of a book on _The Dark Places of Chicago_
which was the stimulating cause of W.T. Stead's soul-stirring book _If
Christ Came to Chicago_. Here was and is the secret of my interest in
all problems dealing with social unrest, the treatment of the poor
and sinful, etc., for I was Chaplain for two years of two homes for
unfortunate women and girls. III. A deeper study of the Indians, in
whom I had always been interested, and which has led to my several
books on the Indians themselves, their Basketry, Blanketry, etc. IV. A
more detailed study of the literature of California and the West, and
also, V. A more comprehensive study of the development of California
and other western states, in order that I might lecture more
acceptably upon these facinating themes.

Here, then, are some of the hobbies that have made, and are making, my
life what it is. I leave it to my readers to determine which has
been the better--to spend my hours, days, weeks, months and years in
getting my livelihood and worrying, or in providing for my family
and myself, and spending all the spare time I had upon these many and
varied hobbies, some of which have developed into my life-work. And
I sincerely hope I shall be absolved from any charge of either
self-glorification or egotism in this recital of personal experiences.
At the time I was passing through them I had no idea of their great
value. They were the things to which something within me bade me flee
to find refuge from the worries that were destroying me, and it is
because of their triumphant success that I now recount them, in the
fervent desire that they may bring hope to despondent souls, give
courage to those who are now wavering, uncertain and pessimistic, and
thus rid them of the demons of fret and worry.

Now that I have come to my final words where all my final admonitions
should be placed, I find I have little left to say, I have said it
all, reader, in the chapters you have read (or skipped.) Indeed I have
not so much cared to preach to you myself, as to encourage, incite
you to do your own preaching. This is, by far, the most effective,
permanent and lasting. Improvement can come only from within. A seed
of desire may be sown by an outsider, but it must grow in the soil of
your soul, be harbored, sheltered, cared for, and finally beloved by
your own very self, before it will flower into new life _for you_.
That you may possess this new life--a life of work, of achievement, of
usefulness to others--is my earnest desire, and this can come only to
its fullest fruition in those who have learned to QUIT WORRYING.