or disagree with your conclusions, just eliminate those lines and take the helps you find.

I particularly emphasize the importance of taking a few minutes each evening and using the time for sizing up things, by inventory, analysis, speculation, comparison and hypothesis. Many of the great captains of industry who are noted for their energy in accomplishing things worth while, have learned the value of this daily habit.

I want to help YOU to form the habit of thinking over each day's activities in the quiet, relaxed, uncolored, unprejudiced, secluded environment of your home. When the day's work is over, spend fifteen or twenty minutes each evening in seclusion, and with closed eyes, size yourself up. Think over your daily round and the work you are doing. Are you getting the best out of yourself? Or are you plodding along aimlessly, scattering your energy in a haphazard, hit-or-miss fashion that benefits nobody? Are you growing, or are you standing still? In these fifteen-minute sizing-up sessions, you will come to grips with yourself. You will see yourself as you really are, and will discover your weaknesses, your strength, your real worth.

I have chosen the evening as the time for our little talks. In the evening we can be cozy, comfy and communicative. The bank is closed. We met the note and got through the day. We are alive and well; we can open our hearts. There is no office boy to disturb us, and the life insurance agent is away at his club.

Yes, we can be alone and tranquilly let down the tension, lower the speed and with normal heartbeats play the low tones, the soft strains, the quieting music, and soothe our nerves.

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.

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.

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.

We shall try to weave science into new patterns and paint interesting pictures, so that science will attract and not repel.

This book is different in its suggestions, in its prescriptions, in its language, but it is universal with all scientific books, in that its aim is helpful truth.

We go by different routes, but our objective point is the same.

We will avoid technical names and symbols, and will speak the common language that the multitude understands.

We shall deal with problems and aspirations that come to us all in this busy workaday world.

We shall try to cut the underbrush in the swamp and blaze a plain trail out on to the big high road.

We shall keep in step to the drum-beats of truth, we will rest and recreate in cool shady places, and then up and on to our purpose with smiles on our faces, courage in our hearts, and song on our lips.

Every moment of our journey will be worth while and positively helpful if we take the trip with conscientious application and continuity of purpose.

Our path is strewn with roses and thorns; we must enjoy the roses and escape the thorns.

We welcome you, the neophyte, who have joined us in our pilgrimage.

4.

Let's be personal; that's a good way to establish a good idea in place of a bad one.

Are YOU pleasant to live with? Keep this personal question before you, even if you are cocksure that you can answer, yes.

Maybe there are some little jars, rattles, gratings, you are not aware of. Few of us are honest when looking for our own faults. There may be some sand in your gear box. It won't hurt you to keep the personal question alive for a few days,—"Am I pleasant to live with?"

I love the pleasant people whether they are fat, lean, tall, short, red heads, brown heads, homely, handsome, republicans or democrats, business men or artisans.

The complaining, unpleasant grouch is like a bear with a toothache. Miserable himself and spreading misery all around.

A freckle-faced, red-headed, cross-eyed man with a healthy funny bone will spread more cheerfulness and sunshine than a bench full of sad and solemn justices of the supreme court, or a religious conference.

What a different story would be written of Job, if he had only possessed a servant who could dance a double shuffle and whistle "Dixie" while cooking breakfast.

David was a man after my own heart; he brought gladsome songs into the world. He said, "Live the way of pleasantness."

You can pray, sing, play, work, think, rest, hope; you can be well or ill, rich or poor and still be pleasant to live with.

Being