When a child’s absorption in his studies keeps him from sleeping, or when he tosses and turns from side to side, muttering the multiplication table or spelling words aloud, when sleep does come, then that child shows he is worrying. It is one of Nature’s danger-signals raised to warn parents, and in mercy the parent should take a firm stand. The burden of that child’s daily tasks should be lightened, the tension of its concentration should be lessened, the hours of its slavery to education should be cut short. When a man or woman works over in dreams the problems of the day, when the sleeping hours are spent in turning the kaleidoscope of the day’s activities, then there is either overwork or worry, and most likely it is the worry that comes from overwork. The Creator never intended a healthy mind to dream of the day’s duties. Either dreamless sleep or dreams of the past should be the order of the night. When the spectre of one grief, one fear, one sorrow, obtrudes itself between the eye and the printed page; when the inner voice of this irritating memory, or fear, looms up so loud as to deaden outside voices, there is danger to the individual. When all day, every hour, every moment, there is the dull, insistent, numb pain of something that makes itself felt through, above and below all our other thinking, we must know that we are worrying. Then there is but one thing to do,—we must stop that worry; we must kill it. The wise men of this wondrous century have made great discoveries in their interviews with Nature. They have discovered that everything that has been created has its uses. They will teach you not to assassinate flies with paper coated with sweetened glue, for “the flies are Nature’s scavengers.” They will tell you just what are the special duties and responsibilities of each of the microscopic microbes with telescopic names. In their wildest moods of scientific enthusiasm they may venture to persuade you into believing that even the _mosquito_ serves some real purpose in Nature, but no man that has ever lived can truthfully say a good word about worry. Worry is forethought gone to seed. Worry is discounting possible future sorrows so that the individual may have present misery. Worry is the father of insomnia. Worry is the traitor in our camp that dampens our powder, weakens our aim. Under the guise of helping us to bear the present, and to be ready for the future, worry multiplies enemies within our own mind to sap our strength. Worry is the dominance of the mind by a single vague, restless, unsatisfied, fearing and fearful idea. The mental energy and force that should be concentrated on the successive duties of the day is constantly and surreptitiously abstracted and absorbed by this one fixed idea. The full rich strength of the _unconscious_ working of the mind, that which produces our best success, that represents our finest activity, is tapped, led away and wasted on worry.