of the will power.

Before the acute stage of neurasthenia is reached there is noticed "brain fag," and brain fag is nature's warning signal calling upon you to take notice and change your mental habits.

Worry sometimes develops into hysteria; again it takes the form of hypochondria or chronic blues. The hypochondriac has a chronic, morbid anxiety about personal health and personal welfare. Frequently this state is accompanied by melancholia.

Melancholia is the forks in the roads. One road leads to incurable insanity, the other to curable melancholia. Right here is where heroic action is needed by the sufferer.

Here is where the sufferer must exert his will power, change completely his mental and physical habits and his surroundings. Occupation, changed habits, taking in of confidence, faith and courage thoughts—these changes are necessary to the victim of melancholia, or he will shatter on the danger rocks and go to pieces.

Melancholia is where is offered a good chance for Christian Science. Mental suggestion, powerful personality of a friend, and the personal help such a friend can give by counsel, example and suggestion, are all helps.

I have abundant evidence that melancholia sufferers can be restored to peace, efficiency and poise, by proper thought direction, and by proper physical employment.

"Pep," which has principally to do with mental efficiency, definitely lays down rules and practical suggestions for the employment of the mind and body. I have letters and verbal proofs in quantity proving the efficiency of those rules and suggestions.

So wonderful have been the results, so numerous the recoveries, that the testimonials, if published, would make the fake nerve tonic manufacturer die of envy.

"Only your nerves." I cannot understand why the word, only, is used. It makes it appear that nerves are of minor importance.

Nerves are less understood than anything in the human anatomy.

Experience has proved that nerves cannot be restored by dope, patent medicines, tonics or prescriptions.

The cure must come by and through the individual possessing the nerves and by and through the individual's power of will and mastery of the mind.

Get the mental equipment right. Let the mind master the body. Let the nerve sufferer get hold of himself and fill his brain with faith thought instead of fear thought, with courage instead of cowardice, with strength instead of weakness, with hope instead of despair, with smiles instead of frowns, with occupation instead of sluggishness, and wonders will appear.

The little shredded, tingling nerve ends will then commence to synchronize instead of fight, to harmonize instead of discord, to build instead of destroy.

The building, or coming back to a normal state, is slow; it takes time, patience and will power, but it can be done. I know. I have been through the mill, and I pass the word to you and try to stir you to be up and doing, even as I did.

Your nerves can be steadied, your thoughts uplifted, your health restored, your ambition re-established, your normality fixed.

Smiles, love and content are to be yours. Poise, efficiency, peace, your blessings. Health, happiness and hope your dividends. All these I promise you if you will read carefully this book from cover to cover and follow its plain, practical teachings.

The curriculum is not hard, it is not my discovery. I am merely the purveyor of facts, the gleaner of truth, and the selector of helpful experiences, first of all for my own benefit and having proved the truth in my own case and by friends to whom I passed the truths and rules.

I made bold to write books, but the writing has paid me well, not alone in dollars, but from having done a helpful thing in writing for other humans who have had problems, worries and nerves.

The big books on nerves are discouraging and forbidding by their immensity and labyrinth of scientific technical terms. They are fine for teachers, but discouraging for the layman.

The great everyday crowd is the class I want to talk to and so I endeavor to write in plain human, sincere style from heart to heart, with understanding, feeling, charity and sympathy.

I have felt the things you feel, and if I can by example, emphasis, suggestion, rule or good intent, be a help to you, then I have done a service.

Don't worry or criticize this book. Take my suggestions in the spirit offered.

PESSIMISTS

Give Them the Cold Shoulder

The calamity howler is found in the midst of peace and plenty. This pessimist sows seeds of discord, plants envy, generates the anarchist spirit, and is an all-around nuisance.

A man may spend years erecting a building; a fiend can demolish it in a minute with a stick of dynamite.

The calamity howler is a destroyer; he doesn't think, he spurts out words. His words and arguments are simply parrot mimicry and void of intellectual impulse, as are the movements of an angle worm.

These peace destroyers talk of their rights and they expect and demand the same privileges and benefits that are earned by the man who uses his head.

These ghouls are born without heads; they just have necks that grow up and are covered with hair. These brainless mollusks are now telling the people that the Sultan of Sulu is to capture Texas and that Japan is to invade Indianapolis; Germany is to capture Quebec, and France is to siege Milwaukee.

The howlers spread talk of yellow peril and black plague to follow. They spread doubt and fear; they tell you the capitalists are awake nights trying to starve you and that they employ inventors to discover new methods of torture for the poor working man.

They accuse business men of grinding down the farmer, forming pools, establishing starvation prices, and ruining agriculture. Yet, as I write these lines, fat beef cattle sell for $10.00 a hundred on the hoof, wheat is way over $1.00 a bushel, and good farms in Missouri even are selling at from $100.00 to $150.00 per acre.

Good farm mortgages are hard to get. The farmers have money in the banks, honey in the house, and automobiles in the garage.

Our taxes in the United States are lower than anywhere on the face of the earth. Our wages are higher than anywhere in the world. Our schools better, our opportunities greater.

And in the midst of better conditions and brighter prospects the shameless, brainless, fameless bipeds pollute the atmosphere, poison hearts and plant discontent.

If these howlers are any better than foot-pads, thieves, grave robbers, or child beaters, I can't see it.

And it is up to you and to me to denounce these peace destroyers, ridicule them, show our contempt for them; they have no hearts, no souls, they are only decay spots that spread rottenness, disease, despair, discouragement, contamination and anarchy, and we do not want such guests at our quilting parties or husking bees.

GLOOM CONTAGION

A Little Study of Faces in a Street Car

This evening I rode home in a crowded street car. What an interesting study to watch the faces in that car.

Discontent, discomfort, worry, gloominess on nearly every face. Tired faces, tired bodies from a hard day's work, mouth corners drooped. Hopelessness stamped on the countenances.

As the people came in the car some of them had smiles or at least