The roof also keeps out sunlight, and some late investigations indicate that glass cuts off some of the most vitally important light rays. The “glame” of the Ralstonites—“air in motion with the sunlight on it”—may have a scientific basis.

It will at once be retorted, “But we cannot heat all out-of-doors.”

A partial reply is: Do not try to make your house a tropical jungle. Travelers assure us that such an atmosphere is not conducive to work or to health.

All great nations have lived in a temperate climate, where physical and mental activity was possible for many hours a day. Science is more and more clearly giving reasons for the cooler temperature in certain physiological laws. The habits of life in regard to air and food are largely under individual, or at least under family control, and should be studied as personal hygiene.

The lessons being so clearly taught in the treatment of tuberculosis should be heeded in forming the general living habits of the people.

If loss of life can be lessened and working power increased by man’s effort, why does he not make the effort? Why are men and women so apathetic over the prevalence of disease? Why do they not devote their energies to stamping it out? For no other reason than their disbelief in the teachings of science, coupled with a lingering superstition that, after all, it is fate, not will power, which rules the destinies of mankind.

Perhaps it is too much to expect that a sturdy plant of belief should have grown since the days of Edwin Chadwick and Benjamin Ward Richardson (1830-50), less than a century ago, when there were perhaps not a dozen men and women who believed that man had any appreciable control over his own health.

This early school of sanitarians endeavored to “get behind fate, to the causes of sickness.” The modern socionomist is, by a study of the mental conditions of communities, endeavoring to get behind the causes of poverty and consequent suffering to the reasons for fatal indifference to dirt.

It is well recognized that in severe sicknesses of many kinds the will to get well is more powerful than drugs, that something which we call nerve force acting upon the physical machine sends a vital current through the arteries, coerces the heart to renewed pumping action, and life comes again to the blanched cheek and glazing eye. This more often happens by a mental stimulus than by any medicine. In like manner the improvement of the body’s shell, the home, like that of the soul’s shell, the body, comes more often from an inward impulse than from outward coercion.

Appeal to the loving but listless parent will reach the heart quickest through love for the child. Therefore stress should be laid on the child, its habits, its surroundings, its ideals. By ideals is meant the very real stimulus to action coming from within. Action must come through the material things which ideals control and through which they express themselves.

Certain notions which have crept into popular currency need to be corrected before the individual can free himself from bondage sufficiently to attempt constructive advance and improvement.

Only a small percentage of adults obtain the full efficiency from the human machine—the only means they have of living, working, enjoying. They permit themselves to stand and walk badly, they breathe with only a portion of their lungs, and so fail to furnish the blood stream with oxygen. They dress unhygienically. They eat wrongly. They exercise little. In short, they subject their bodies to abusive treatment which would ruin any machine. Because retribution does not instantly follow infraction of Nature’s laws, they become callous and unbelieving. Economy and efficiency in human time and strength is one of the lessons to be taught the young people, so that they may not waste their patrimony.

The youth feels as rich in his fifty years to come as he does with a legacy of $50,000 in the bank. The years, however, can yield only small variations from the established rate of interest. The human machine can manufacture only a limited amount of energy. It remains to utilize that quantity to the best advantage. This can be done only by having a purpose in life strong enough to resist alluring temptations to fritter away both time and strength.

One of the world’s busy workers found that the distractions of urban life were breaking in upon his working time and making inroads upon his physical vitality. He recognized that work for the body and work for the mind must be balanced, and he evolved an acrostic to be followed as a rule of life, the fulfillment of which has meant prolonged years of efficient work and has kept the freshness of middle life with the advancing years. Taking the six days of the week as a unit, the acrostic is as follows:

The first and last are nearly fixed quantities, the other three may vary within certain limits as to amount of time given and intensity of effort. Amusement and exercise may be taken together; exercise and sleep may be somewhat interchangeable.

The task, or daily work, is a necessity for mental and physical health. It should be accepted as a part of human life and the will and energy should be directed to doing it well. It may be a pure delight, the most entertaining thing that happens; it should be interesting. It is astonishing how interesting a dull piece of work may become if one sets one’s self to doing it well. That which one subconsciously knows one is doing badly is drudgery. The real pleasure in life comes not from so-called amusements—things done by other people to make one laugh; to “take one’s mind off”—but from seeing the work of one’s own hand and brain prosper. The work of creation, of transformation to desirable result, is the purest joy the human mind can experience. Fourteen hours a day is not too much for this kind of task. The difficulty is to gain skill of hand and eye, or training of mind, to this end. A fallacy, a canker at the heart of our social fabric today, is that the daily task is something to be rid of.

The psychology of doing is clearly illustrated in the character of Fool Billy, as drawn by the author of “Priscilla of the Good Intent.”

“Is there nought ye like better than idleness?” asked the blacksmith. “Think now, Billy—just ponder over it.”

“Well, now,” answered the other, after a silence, “there’s playing—what ye might call playing at a right good game. Could ye think of some likely pastime, David?”

“Ay, could I; blowing bellows is the grandest frolic ever I came across.” ...

“I doubt ’tis work, David.... I shouldn’t like to be trapped into work. ’Twould scare me when I woke o’ nights and thought of it.”

“See ye then, Billy”—blowing the bellows gently—“is it work to make yon sparks go, blue and green and red, as fast as ever ye like to drive ’em?”

“Te-he, ’tis just a bit o’ sport—I hadn’t thought of it in that light.” And soon he was blowing steadily.

Later, when David the smith was going to America and