That, if she only could realize it, the cause of the irritation which annoyed her every day and dragged her down so that many and many a night she had been home with a sick headache was entirely and solely in herself and not at all in the woman who worked next to her, however disagreeable that woman may have been. Every morning when she wakes the woman at the next desk rises before her like a black specter. "Oh, I would not mind the work; I could work all day happily and quietly and go home at night and rest; the work would be a joy to me compared to this torture of having to live all day next to that woman." It is odd, too, and true, that if the woman at the next desk finds that she is annoying our friend, unconsciously she seems to ferret out her most sensitive places and rub them raw with her sharp, discourteous words. She seems to shirk her own work purposely and to arrange it so that the woman next her must do the work in her place. Then, having done all in her power to give the woman next her harder labor, she snaps out a little scornful remark about the mistakes that have been made. If she--the woman at the next desk--comes in in the morning feeling tired and irritable herself, she vents her irritability on her companion until she has worked it off and goes home at night feeling much better herself, while her poor neighbor goes home tired out and weak. The woman at the next desk takes pains to let little disagreeable hints drop about others--if not directly in their hearing at least in ways which she knows may reach them. She drops hint to others of what those in higher office have said or appeared to think, which might frighten "others" quite out of their wits for fear of their being discharged, and then, where should they get their bread and butter? All this and more that is frightful and disagreeable and mean may the woman at the next desk do; or she may be just plain, every-day _ugly._ Every one knows the trying phases of her own working neighbor. But with all this, and with worse possibilities of harassment than I have even touched upon, the woman at the next desk is powerless, so far as I am concerned, if I choose to make her so. The reason she troubles me is because I resist her. If she hurts my feelings, that is the same thing. I resist her, and the resistance, instead of making me angry, makes me sore in my nerves and makes me want to cry. The way to get independent of her is not to resist her, and the way to learn not to resist her is to make a daily and hourly study of dropping all resistances to her. This study has another advantage, too; if we once get well started on it, it becomes so interesting that the concentration on this new interest brings new life in itself.