When we have wearied ourselves with worry, useless exertion, and fretting, or with envy, hatred, or malice; when we have bent all our energies to some low aim or selfish purpose; when we have broken nearly all of Nature’s laws and are called upon to pay the penalty, we seek a physician. A man sets a shifting standard of wealth as his goal, and strains to attain it; he eats improperly and in great haste, his thoughts filled with the problems of the market; he is forever on the alert for any advantage that he may take of his fellows; he cannot endure to have another reap an advantage that is denied him; he is envious of every bit of success that, passing him by, goes to another; he makes of his life one fierce round of money-getting. Then, perhaps before attaining his goal, perhaps after reaching it, he discovers himself a physical wreck, and hastens to his physician, seeking external means to cure that which has its root in internal conditions; asking the man of drugs to “minister to a mind diseased.” To the nervous, worried, hurried person, from whatever cause, the physician’s advice is generally the same—“Take a complete rest,” meaning thereby that all work be given up and inaction take the place of activity. When circumstances allow it, we try to follow this advice, but it usually results in boredom and impatience at the lost time; when circumstances do not allow the inactivity, we get discouraged and complain of life as a series of mysterious, unjust happenings. The physician’s advice proves a mockery and we become listless and discouraged. We hardly ever seek our rest from moment to moment; for we continue to look upon it as something we shall find after our work is done. The laborer, the merchant, and the professional man think of the end of the day as resting-time, just as the busy housewife does. It matters not how much we may love our work, we expect to be exhausted by our efforts before the day is over. We feel hurried, anxious, fretted, and overworked all day long, and comfort ourselves with the prospect of rest at night. And all the time we might rest and never find the day so short as to cause worry, nor the hours so long nor the work so hard as to tire us. It is only when we are burdened with distracting cares that we get tired by what is a joy to us. The true artist wants no eight-hour day; he laments only that daylight fades so soon. When we are doing only what we love to do, and doing it well, we run and are not weary, we walk and do not faint. Of late years the trainers of athletes have recognized this—they think it more important to keep the men buoyant and fresh than to increase the muscles at the risk of bringing them “stale” to the day of contest. They insist that the men shall not exhaust themselves at any time before the race. Exhaustion shows either that we have been doing the wrong thing or doing it wrong, and kindly Nature reproves us with the loss of Sleep. CHAPTER XXXVIII SAVING OF EFFORT