All day we've heard the band with its drums and trombones and shrieky music. The day with its busy whirl kept our analyzing mental think-tank occupied with thoughts of gain and game and fame. In the evening we have time to study logic and to reason, to analyze and to take inventory, to thresh out problems. So let us relax and reflect in the evening quiet. 3. Man's nature makes it imperative for him to be interested in something. That interest is to his help or hurt, according as he directs it. There is much worry and misery in the world because so many are astatic, like a compass that has lost its loadstone. Man is definitely the result of the materials the body and the mind feed upon. Character is the result of a determined purpose to be and to do right--to one's self and to one's fellows. The man of character focuses his attention on truth, and on fact. [Sidenote: Theory and Fact.] He uses theories with fact, to aid his progress, but he recognizes that theorizing, without fact as a safety ballast, is a useless expenditure. Theories without fact leave man in a rudderless boat; he gets nowhere, he merely drifts. Theory often helps to get at fact, but the better way is to get at fact by proven experience, of which there is an inexhaustible abundance in the world. Facts are based on natural laws. The study of natural laws is beneficial. We shall strive in our studies to keep close to fact with just enough speculation to enliven the interest in facts. Living the artificial life makes for worry, illness and failure. Living in harmony with the great natural laws is the helpful way to live. To abide by the law is safety; to violate the law brings punishment. Every man is better if he follows scientific methods and habits of thought and living. The loafing or astatic mind will fall into morbid tendencies. The employed, truth-seeking, idealistic, hopeful mind is never dependent on people or things for its pleasure. The acquiring of helpful knowledge, the seeking of worth-while truth, are ever profitable employments, paying present and future dividends, and meanwhile those acts positively divert the thought from morbid tendencies. I shall strive to bring helpful knowledge, good cheer and interesting facts for your present occupation and benefit. If I succeed in accomplishing my purpose, even in part, my time has been well spent. [Sidenote: Thought Never Stops.] We have an unchallenged fact to rest our feet on, a fact that shall follow us through all the pages of this book, and that is: Our thoughts never stop, our brains never sleep. So then, we must consider that thought current, and reckon with it. The motive power is turned on, and we must grasp the helm if we sail the sea of life successfully, baffling storms and avoiding rocks. Scientific books are usually dry, uninviting reading; they lack the human interest. They are generally bloodless skeletons.