Who cares for a game that is simple and easy? Who cares for a game when you beat as a matter of course, and without any effort on your part at all? Whoever cares for games at all cares most for good, stiff ones, where, when you have beaten, you can feel that you have really accomplished something; and when you have not beaten, you have at least learned points that will enable you to beat the next time, or the next to the next time--or sometime. And everyone who really loves a game wants to stick to it until he has conquered and is proficient. Why not wake up, and realize that same interest and courage in this biggest game of all--this game of life? We must play it! Few of us are cowards enough to put ourselves out of it. Unless we play it and obey the rules we do not really play at all. Many of us do not know the rules, but it is our place to look about and find them out. Many more of us think that we can play the game better if we make up rules of our own, and leave out whatever regular rules we do know, that do not suit our convenience. But that never works. It only sometimes seems to work; and although plain common sense shows us over and over that the game played according to our own ideas amounts to nothing, it is strange to see how many work and push to play the game in their own way instead of in the game's way. It is strange to see how many shove blindly in this direction, and that direction, to cut their way through a jungle, when there is the path just by them, if they will take it. Most of us do not know our own power because we would rather stay in a ditch and complain. Strength begets strength, and we can only find our greater power, by using intelligently, and steadily, the power we have. CHAPTER IX _How to be Ill and get Well_ ILLNESS seems to be one of the hardest things to happen to a busy woman. Especially hard is it when a woman must live from hand to mouth, and so much illness means, almost literally, so much less food. Sometimes one is taken so suddenly and seriously ill that it is impossible to think of whether one has food and shelter or not; one must just be taken care of or die. It does not seem to matter which at the time. Then another must meet the difficulty. It is the little nagging illnesses that make the trouble--just enough to keep a woman at home a week or ten days or more, and deprive her of wages which she might have been receiving, and which she very much needs. These are the illnesses that are hard to bear. Many a woman has suffered through an illness like this, which has dragged out from day to day, and finally left her pale and weak, to return to her work with much less strength than she needs for what is before her. After forcing herself to work day after day, her strength comes back so slowly, that she appears to go through another illness, on her feet, and "in the harness," before she can really call herself well again.