0^ 
 
 NEW THOUGHT COMMON SENSE 
 
New Thought 
 
 Common Sen^e 
 
 and 
 
 What Life Means to M< 
 
 By 
 Ella Wheeler Wilcox 
 
 Chicago 
 W. B. Conkey Company 
 
ISo2 
 
 LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 OCT 30 1908 
 
 Copyritrtit fcntry 
 
 cimss cc xxc, No, 
 *'coPY a. 
 
 Copyright, 1908 
 
 BY 
 
 Ella Wheeler Wilcox 
 
 ot 
 
 CT 
 
 6) l^'^y 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Ancient Lineage of New Thought 11 
 
 The Anti'toxin of Common Sense 19 
 
 Are You Doing the Best You Can? 25 
 
 Be Not Easily Offended . 33 
 
 For What Are You Living? 39 
 
 Ignore Misfortune 45 
 
 The Power of Personality 51 
 
 Common Sense and **Coodness" 59 
 
 **Good Business" ... 65 
 
 The Trapeze Performer 71 
 
 The High Calling of Fatherhood 79 
 
 The High Calling of Motherhood 87 
 
 Thought Building for Children 93 
 
 The New Thought Economy 101 
 
 What Is a Cood Woman? 107 
 
 The Color of Your Thoughts 115 
 
 *1n Cod We Trust" .121 
 
 Are You Alive? 127 
 
 Something About Celibacy 135 
 
 The Old and the New Thought View of Life 143 
 
 The Cities Beyond 149 
 
 The Onward March 155 
 
 Common Sense Ideas in Marriage 161 
 
Table of Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Shading of the Picture 169 
 
 Woman and the Cigarette 175 
 
 Sinning Against the *'Iioly Ghost" 181 
 
 New Thoughts and Beauty 189 
 
 Famous and Infamous Women 195 
 
 Enemies to Happiness 201 
 
 The New Year 205 
 
 Enthusiasm 211 
 
 Brace Up 217 
 
 Universal Need 223 
 
 Every Day Opportunities 229 
 
 The Masters 235 
 
 Building Kindness Cells 243 
 
 What Is Optimism? 249 
 
 What Is the Loving Thing to Do? 259 
 
 A New Thought Rosary 265 
 
 Unto the End 271 
 
 Keep Still and Wait 277 
 
 What Life Means to Me 283 
 
The flowers have tender little souls 
 
 That love, rejoice, aspire. 
 Each star that on its orbit rolls 
 
 Feels infinite desire. 
 The diamond longs to scintillate 
 
 When hid beneath the sod. 
 The universe is animate 
 
 With consciousness of God. 
 
THE ANCIENT LINEAGE OF 
 NEW THOUGHT 
 
The Ancient Lineage of New Thought 
 
 The philosophy of New Thought is not new, it 
 has not one original idea, but is a simplified and prac- 
 tical form of a very ponderous and wonderful religion. 
 It makes an application to the everyday needs of 
 modern life, of principles and ideas which the ancients 
 used only for the few who chose the life of adepts. 
 
 No being, human or divine, known to history, 
 sacred or profane, can be called the originator or dis- 
 coverer of mental or spiritual healing. The Bhagavad- 
 Gita, the oldest known record of religious tenets, is full 
 of New Thought. 
 
 In the Dhammapada Buddha it is said : \J 
 
 "All that we are, is the result of what we have 
 thought." 
 
 ''In this Ifniverse there is one continuous force on 
 every plane of existence. There is no difference be- 
 tween the sun and man. There is no such thing 
 as my body, or your body, except in words. It is all 
 one. Sun, moon, mineral, man. Even in manifest 
 motion there is only unity. One who has learned 
 how to manipulate the internal forces will get the 
 whole of nature under his control. 
 
 "One man having more control of 'Prana' than 
 another, can rouse him for the time being to a state of 
 vibration, and transmit health to him. The process 
 can be carried on at a distance. Is there any break 
 between you and the sun? Why, then, cannot force 
 travel? 
 
 11 
 
12 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 ''This is only primifive healing. Faith and will, 
 brought to bear, rouse, through faith, the dormant 
 Prana of the patient and dispels disease. All manifesta- 
 tions of power arise from control of Prana or thought." 
 
 Here are some of the principles taken from the 
 Raja Yoga (The literal meaning oi Raja Yoga is ''The 
 science of conquering the external nature for the pur- 
 pose of realizing the Divinity within'' What right 
 has any modern teacher to claim that central idea as 
 his or her own discovery?): "We must have four sorts 
 of ideas: Friendship for all; we must he merciful 
 toward those in misery; we must rejoice with the 
 happy y and ignore wickedness.'' 
 
 Every reaction in the form of hatred or evil 
 thought is so much loss to the mind; and every evil 
 thought, or deed, of hatred, controlled and overcome 
 will he laid to our favor. Each time we suppress the 
 unworthy impulse, so much good energy is stored in 
 our favor, to be converted to higher uses. 
 
 In the least known Atharva Veda there are sugges- 
 tions and affirmations for the cure of disease which 
 rival in minuteness and number any modern mind 
 cure scheme. 
 
 Those who care to look up these old works, can 
 find how the masters of the most ancient philosophies 
 w^ere familiar with all the laws claimed to be discov- 
 ered by Theosophy, Christian Science or New 
 Thought. 
 
 It is difficult to understand how any modern meta- 
 physician can claim a "discovery" in this line of 
 thought, after reading such extracts from a philosophy 
 thousands of years old when Christ came to earth. 
 The idea that nothing exists in the universe but 
 God and that by our consciousness of unity with 
 
The Ancient Lineage of New Thought 13 
 
 Him we attain health, bliss and immortality, is the 
 very foundation stone of the Vedas. It is at least 
 presumptuous for anyone in this age to claim it as a 
 discovery. 
 
 Once every century or t^vo, the progressive minds 
 of earth grow tired of empty forms and creeds, and 
 seek for some simple expression of true religious feel- 
 ing. Just now this creed is known as "New Thought." 
 Two hundred years ago it was called "Quietism," 
 and its leader was a woman, Mme. Guyon. She was 
 born with a passion for a religious life. She passed 
 through various phases of self-torture, self-sacrifice, 
 austerity and devotion, and yet found no peace. 
 
 Finally a holy man said to her: "Madam, you are 
 disappointed because you seek from without, that 
 which you have within. Accustom yourself to seek 
 God in your own heart, and you will find Him." 
 
 This statement was a revelation to Mme. Guyon; 
 from that hour she became what was in that age 
 termed "a mystic." It is said of her by a historian of 
 her time: "God was continually present to her, and 
 she appeared to feel and behold all creatures as im- 
 mersed in the gracious omnipresence of the Most 
 High. In her adoring contemplation of the Divine 
 Presence, she often found herself unable to pray for 
 any particular blessing. More than once those who 
 chanced to sit near her, believed they perceived a 
 marvelous efflux of grace proceeding from her to 
 themselves." 
 
 Mme. Guyon founded a religion called Quietism. It 
 meant simply the habit of becoming quiet and finding 
 the Divine Nature within. It called for no aid of 
 priest, ideal, form or creed. 
 
 That is precisely what the "New Thought" and 
 
14 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 "Mental Science" people mean when they talk about 
 "going into the Silence." 
 
 Mme. Guyon gained her idea of "Quietism" from 
 one who had gained his from the adepts and scholars 
 of India. 
 
 "New Thought" goes back to the same reservoir 
 of human knowledge and religious attainments. 
 Mme. Guyon often went to the extreme, which means 
 fanaticism, and lost her balance, as so many devoutly 
 religious people do. 
 
 She refused to have an aching tooth extracted, be- 
 lieving it was right to suffer since the pain was sent. 
 She lost all interest in the world in which she lived, 
 and unless engaged in establishing hospitals, or in other 
 charitable works, or in her large correspondence on 
 religious matters, she found happiness only in solitude 
 and quiet, frequently lying absolutely motionless for 
 hours in the woods. 
 
 It is a good thing to be alone a portion of every 
 day, and it is a good thing to commune with one's own 
 soul. There is no growth possible otherwise. But it 
 is a sensible thing to keep in touch with humanity and 
 to walk along earth's highways, interested in and in- 
 teresting to one's fellow beings. 
 
 Any religion which eliminates human sympathy 
 and common sense is on the road to fanaticism. 
 
 Just as Mme. Guyon was absurd in refusing to 
 draw the aching tooth, so the modern spiritual fanatic 
 is absurd and almost criminal at times, when he allows 
 a member of his family to die without trying "old 
 thought" means of cure. 
 
 There is a spirituality capable of preventing disease. 
 
 But once it fails and alloAvs the enemy to creep in, 
 then, if he is not quickly put to rout, let practical 
 methods make their attempts at cure. 
 
The Ancient Lineage of New Thought 15 
 
 While we keep our eyes fixed upon the heavens, 
 we should remember that our feet must remain on the 
 earth until we are freed from our bodies. 
 
 We have not yet learned to fly. 
 
16 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 The longer I live and the more I see, 
 
 Of the struggle of souls toward the heights above, 
 The stronger this truth comes home to me: 
 
 That the Universe rests on the shoulders of love. 
 
THE ANTI-TOXIN OF 
 COMMON SENSE 
 
The Anti-toxin of Common Sense 
 
 Many phases of metaphysical thought to-day have 
 become epidemic. They need the anti-toxin of Com- 
 mon Sense, to save the minds infected, from mania. 
 * Any philosophy, or religion, or creed, or dogma, 
 which fails to make men better sons, husbands and 
 fathers, better neighbors and citizens, is of little use 
 to the world. 
 
 Any woman who is not improved as a daughter, ^ 
 wife, mother, neighbor and friend, by her religion, has 
 not found the path that leads to the highest devel- 
 opment of her character. 
 
 Hundreds of men and women in our midst are 
 striving to attain powers which will enable them to 
 reach above this every day plane of consciousness, 
 and to see and hear what is transpiring in psychic 
 realms. 
 
 Insanity, divorce, broken homes and broken 
 minds, frequently result from these foolish endeavors 
 to become "adepts." 
 
 The ranks of the adepts are not reinforced, but 
 the ranks of the world's unfortunates are. 
 
 No religion, no philosophy, no course of mental 
 or spiritual training can fit human beings to adorn oi 
 enjoy "realms beyond" unless it fits them first to adorn, 
 and enjoy, the realms in which they are placed by 
 Destiny. 
 
 No amount of spiritual enthusiasm can render us 
 capable of filling important positions in "kingdom 
 come" unless it enables us to first perform every 
 
 19 
 
20 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 nearest duty here on earth with willing cheerfulness, 
 courage and trust. 
 
 The Creator who placed us upon earth, in human 
 bodies, with human instincts and appetites, intended 
 us to live as normal human beings, performing the 
 tasks necessary to the earthly sojourn, while we 
 develop to the best of our ability the character 
 which merits immortality. 
 
 But this development cannot be obtained by leap- 
 ing over the practical, commonplace obligations of 
 home, neighborhood and society, and arriving at some 
 spiritual eminence from which immortality is dis- 
 cernible. 
 
 It must be attained by climbing up the stairs of du- 
 ties performed. Prayer and meditation "in the silence" 
 are both means of lifting the mind above the petty 
 worries of everyday life. They are like refreshing 
 showers, which cleanse the mind from dust; like rays 
 of sunshine, which bring forth blossoms on the bar- 
 ren earth. 
 
 But the woman who devotes her time to prayer 
 and meditation and neglects to sweep her room, to 
 prepare the meals for her family, to care for her per- 
 son and make herself attractive to her husband and 
 children, and who fails to interest herself in the things 
 which render her companionable to those nearest 
 her, is not developing the highest attributes of her 
 nature. 
 
 She is not winning immortality; and she is not on 
 the path to the highest usefulness in this world. 
 
 She is making a mistake, which will prove a hind- 
 rance to her happiness on both planes of con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 When any religion creates a growing chasm 
 
The Anti-toxin of Common Sense 21 
 
 between a wife or a mother, and her family, and causes 
 a separateness of interests, and atrophies the affections, 
 its divine origin may be questioned. 
 
 Religion should give new vitality to the heart, 
 strengthen the love nature, and bring those who are 
 near to us still nearer; it should enable us to be so 
 broad, so tolerant, so sympathetic, so loving, that all 
 difference of faith can be borne, without discord or 
 ahenation of the affections. 
 
 New Thought, so called, of all religions ought to 
 bring harmony rather than dissension into the family 
 circle. Its whole philosophy rests upon the power of 
 silent thought to change conditions and achieve 
 results. 
 
 The old creeds believed in proselyting, in trying 
 to make converts, in preaching and haranguing, and in 
 revival meetings, which consisted in working upon the 
 emotional and hysterical nature of the "unconverted." 
 
 New Thought has abandoned all these methods. 
 The law of assertion has taken place of preaching 
 and praying with "sinners." Thought has been de- 
 clared by physical science to be a phase of the same 
 energy which governs the solar system, v It is under- 
 stood how, rightly and persistently directed, thought 
 can draw to the mind which sends it forth, whatever 
 that mind desires. ) Demand creates supply. 
 
 The woman w^ho wants her family to come into 
 harmony with her ideas, should begin by making her 
 family love and respect her in every capacity of wife, 
 mother, sister, daughter and friend. 
 
 So practical, so thoughtful, so humanly loving, so 
 useful, 'so companionable should she be in her daily 
 life, so cheerful and so amiable in her performance 
 of duties, that her example would, in the natural 
 
22 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 course of events, seem worthy of emulation, and her 
 ideas and opinions worthy of respect. 
 
 When such a woman sends into space her quiet, 
 earnest assertions that those who are dear to her 
 believe as she believes, and understand as she under- 
 stands, she need use no arguments, no sermons, no 
 educating methods, to bring about the desired result. 
 
 Sooner or later she will be given her heart's wish. 
 
 But she who allows her creed to separate her 
 from her family, who forgets to be the ideal wife, 
 mother or daughter in trying to be the spiritual adept, 
 only drives her family further away from the truth 
 as she understands it, and delays her own best de- 
 velopment by neglecting her nearest duties. 
 
 It is good wives and good mothers and good 
 women in the daily walks of life that the world needs, 
 not adepts or miracle workers. 
 
 "Be ye faithful in a few things, and ye shall be 
 made rulers over many." 
 
 Great powers come to those who continually per- 
 form small obligations with an understanding of their 
 importance in the building of the House Beautiful — 
 the human character. 
 
 I care not who were vicious back of me: 
 No shadow of their sins on me is shed. 
 
 My will is greater than heredity, 
 I am no worm to feed upon the dead. 
 
ARE YOU DOING THE 
 BEST YOU CAN? 
 
Are You Doing the Best You Can? 
 
 Ofttimes we hear used the expression, "I am 
 doing the best I can." 
 
 But are we doing the best we can? 
 
 Are you? If you are a man, and your home is not 
 all you would like it to be, are you doing the best you 
 can to make it right? 
 
 You are providing your wife and children with all 
 that money can buy. But are you making them feel 
 how hard you work for this money, and are you giving 
 them no companionship, no attention, no personal 
 interest outside of paying the bills they contract? 
 
 Then you are not doing the best you can to bring 
 about right home conditions. 
 
 You are not a real man, a real husband, a real 
 father. You are merely a mine of ore, from which 
 members of your family dig the material things they 
 need. 
 
 But their hearts and minds are starved for what 
 you can give and should give — sympathy, personal 
 interest, companionship. 
 
 Perhaps you are the other kind of a man, who stores 
 up money for the future, and who, with any surplus, 
 likes to make a good showing at the clubs and among 
 the politicians, but who begrudges his wife a purse of 
 her own and crucifies her daily on the altar of mean- 
 ness. 
 
 I recall an old, old lady, who was sensitive, refined, 
 unselfish and, unmercenary by nature, and who had 
 been tortured into a discontented pessimist as only 
 
 25 
 
26 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 such natures can be, by fifty years of married life witli 
 a man who had not one vice, save that of money 
 meanness. 
 
 Never did he give her a dime without compelling 
 her to ask for it and to tell for what purpose she used 
 it afterward. 
 
 Only when the children grew old enough to earn 
 money and give the mother of their earnings, was she 
 relieved from this miserable slavery, which destroyed 
 her love and respect for her husband, and her pride 
 in herself. 
 
 Yet this man was always declaring that he "was 
 doing the best he could to provide for his family." 
 
 But was he? There is something to consider 
 besides supplying the material needs of a wife when a 
 man marries a woman of any refinement or feeling. 
 He must provide her with conditions which sustain 
 her self-respect, as well as with mere food, and roof, 
 and raiment. 
 
 If you are a woman, perhaps you say you are doing 
 the best you can to create beautiful home relations 
 for your family. 
 
 But are you? You are loyal, industrious and affec- 
 tionate. But is your house well ordered and clean and 
 comfortable? 
 
 Order is heaven's first law; and unless your home 
 is orderly you are committing a sin against high heaven. 
 
 Unless you are amiable, and optimistic, and sym- 
 pathetic, and patient, you are committing a sin against 
 love and wronging your children, and probably 
 alienating your husband. 
 
 So are you doing the best you can? 
 
 Then in the matter of health? You are doing the 
 best you can, you say, to keep well. 
 
Are You Doing the Best You Can ? 27 
 
 But are you? Are you hreatMng ? If you had a 
 thousand dollars in your purse and were starving, it 
 would seem very foolish; but you have thousands of 
 cells in your lungs, and you are using only about 6 per 
 cent of them for the purpose of pumping fresh air 
 through your body. 
 
 That is the percentage used by nineteen people in 
 every score and that is why only one in every score 
 is really enjoying good health. 
 
 Are you breathing the best you can? Give five 
 minutes each morning and night to breathing exercises, 
 using every lung cell, and see the difference in a 
 week's time. 
 
 Instead of wearing out your mind with impractica- 
 ble efforts at gaining something you do not need, stop 
 a bit and ask yourself a few questions. 
 
 Are you doing the duties which lie nearest? 
 
 Are you confronting the daily obligations and 
 problems of domestic, social, political and religious life 
 with dignity, pride, self-respect and courage? 
 
 These obligations and problems are not always 
 presented to us in tragic or lofty form. They more 
 frequently come in mean and shabby attire, and with 
 a disagreeable countenance. 
 
 There are relatives or members of your family 
 who, to use your own expression, perhaps, "get on 
 your nerves." They annoy you in a thousand and 
 one small ways. Their manners, their habits, their 
 voices, their ideas, all render them uncongenial to you. 
 And so life is a constant discord. 
 
 But are you meeting this situation with all that is 
 tolerant, and large-minded, and wholesome, and kind 
 in your nature? 
 
 Do you try to make these people feel that you are 
 
28 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 kindly disposed toward them; that you have their best 
 interests at heart; that you admire whatever is admir- 
 able in them, and that you sympathize with their 
 dearest aims and ambitions, even if you disapprove of 
 some things they do? 
 
 Only by such an attitude of mind can you ever 
 hope to render the situation less insupportable, or to 
 influence them to be what you desire. 
 
 If you are nagging, sarcastic, contemptuous, irritable, 
 cold, sullen or indifferent to those who annoy you, then 
 you are making a bad matter worse, and you are wast- 
 ing beautiful life, and valuable mental forces, in a mean 
 and ignoble manner. 
 
 You are sinning against yourself, even more than 
 these people are sinning against you. 
 
 If the individual who disappoints you is your wife 
 or your husband are you doing all in your power to 
 better the condition? 
 
 Remember, it is the most vitally important matter 
 in your life; in two lives; and if there are children, in 
 their lives also. 
 
 The man who marries a woman he loves, and who 
 loves him, and then fails to keep her loving and happy, 
 is either a vicious or a weak man. 
 
 The woman who fails to keep her husband happy 
 and in love with her is either a vicious or a weak 
 woman. Somewhere there is a Aveak point. 
 
 You should have a quiet talk with yourself, and 
 find out where you failed; and, if it is not too late, try 
 to mend the broken link in love's chain, or put in a 
 new link. 
 
 If you are running about to your neighbors for 
 consolation, talking about your domestic disappoint- 
 ments, you are assuredly weak, and you are not meet- 
 
Are You Doing the Best Yor Can? 29 
 
 ing this great problem with the strength and pride 
 demanded by the situation. 
 
 The Invisible Helpers who stand very near a soul 
 in trouble, should be the only intermediaries between 
 husband and wife. Go alone into your room; sit very 
 quietly and ask these Divine Friends to come to your 
 aid; they are messengers of God, and will give you 
 light and understanding when you are at the limit of 
 your own strength. 
 
 Unless you have asked such guidance and felt your 
 whole being go forth in the demand for light you have 
 not done all you could or should to better the situation. 
 
 Are you doing what you can, and all you should, 
 for those nearest you, in a financial way? 
 
 And are you taking care not to overdo for others? 
 
 It is your first obligation, before you give to public 
 charities or foreign missions, or make a display in the 
 world, to see that you have no relatives who are on 
 the town, or liable to become public charges. If every 
 man and woman attended to this duty there would be 
 no need of almshouses or homes for paupers. 
 
 But it is just as imperative an obligation that you do 
 not make paupers, by supporting people who are able 
 to work, and who lose all moral fibre and all strength 
 of character by having you pay their bills and assume 
 their obligations. A rich man is often the worst 
 enemy of his own children, when he allows them to 
 grow up without self-reliance or a sense of responsi- 
 bility. 
 
 How are you meeting all these problems of life? 
 
 Are you doing the best you can? 
 
30 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Oh, you who mourn about To-day's dark 
 
 sorrows. 
 What part have you in bringing bright 
 
 To-morrows? 
 
BE NOT EASILY 
 OFFENDED 
 
■" Be Not Easily Offended 
 
 A MOST beautiful calendar opens with the lines: 
 
 "I'll not easily offend, 
 
 Nor be easily offended; 
 What's amiss I'll try to mend, 
 
 And endure what can't be mended." 
 
 One could hardly start the year with a better 
 resolution than is contained in these words. 
 ^ To not easily offend is to be continually considerate. 
 To think before speaking; to restrain the careless word 
 and the useless criticism; to forego the pleasure of a 
 laugh when it would fall as ridicule on sensitive ears, 
 and to avoid the little sins of omission which mar 
 friendship — the unanswered letter, the unpaid call, the 
 word of approval or congratulation for achievement 
 or success, and the word of sympathy for trouble or 
 loss. 
 
 Then, too, even more admirable still, it seems to 
 me, is the resolve: 
 
 "Nor be easily offended." 
 
 One of the most expensive luxuries of life, and the 
 least profitable as an investment for happiness, is the 
 friend who is "easily offended," and to whom you are 
 forever apologizing for the mistakes you did not mean 
 to make, and the slights you did not know you had 
 given, until they were forced upon your unwilling at- 
 tention. 
 
 ^ The easily offended nature is usually the selfish and 
 3 33 
 
34 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 self-centered nature; yet it may be found, too, with 
 those who have been neglected in early youth, and 
 who have formed the habit of morbid self-depreciation. 
 
 I have known a successful and broad-minded 
 business man, to be hypersensitive regarding the 
 small things of life, and to imagine he was ^'neglected" 
 and ''slighted" if a friend passed him, absorbed in 
 thought, with only an ordinary salutation. But this 
 man had been an orphan boy, living a lonely child- 
 hood among people who fed and clothed him, but 
 who ofttimes made him realize that he was not an 
 important factor in their lives. 
 
 So he had shaped his mind to gloomy thoughts of 
 neglect, and after he became important to the lives of 
 many people, and a man of large affairs and wide in- 
 terests, still his brain continued to work in the old 
 groove, and he was "easily offended." 
 
 More frequently, however, this fault is associated 
 with the selfish and the vain, who find no happiness 
 unless given the center of life's stage, and with the full 
 force of the calcium light thrown upon them. And if 
 one individual in the audience looks at any other of 
 God's company for a brief moment, then they are 
 "offended" and want to resign from the role and com- 
 pel the curtain to ring down. 
 
 Difficult, indeed, is life with such people; and there- 
 fore the motto which bids us to be "not easily offended" 
 should be written in letters of light and hung where all 
 may read. Love your friends, trust them, believe in 
 them; and when any events arise which seem incon- 
 sistent with such belief, wait an explanation before 
 becoming offended. 
 
 In nine cases out of ten the explanation will be 
 forthcoming; for if you yourself are a worth-while, val- 
 
Be Not Easily Offended 35 
 
 uable and loyal friend, it stands to reason that you are 
 not going to be neglected or ill used, by those whose 
 friendship you value. 
 
 "Be not easily offended." You can help to sweet- 
 en the world for yourself and others if you live true to 
 this motto. 
 
 Put it into practice, first of all, where every great 
 virtue and accomplishment should be practised — in 
 the home. 
 
 As a wife, a daughter, a sister, a mother, "be not 
 easily offended." 
 
 The touchy woman can destroy an Eden almost as 
 easily as can the serpent. 
 
 There is usually a lamentable lack of a sense of 
 humor in a woman who is easily offended. She takes 
 every least act, every look and every failure to speak 
 or look as a serious intent on the part of somebody to 
 "wound her feelings." 
 
 How she suffers, poor thing ! Yet how she makes 
 others suffer by her silly self-consciousness and her 
 eternal sensitiveness. 
 
 She will tell you that because she gives so much 
 and is so unselfish she suffers more keenly through the 
 lack of others to return in like measure. 
 
 But this is not true of love. The really loving na- 
 ture is so occupied with the giving, that it does not find 
 time to be offended over small neglects. 
 
 The royally loving nature is not "touchy." It is not 
 suspicious. It is not easily offended. 
 \ It is cheerful, it is generous, it is optimistic, it is 
 amiable. 
 
 And these are qualities which help women to build 
 earthly heavens, and to keep husband, children, friends 
 true, loyal and admiring. 
 
 "Be not easily offended." 
 
36 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 With its unburied dead the earth is sad. 
 Art thou alive? Proclaim it and be glad. 
 Perchance the dead may hear thee and arise, 
 Knowing they live, and liere is Paradise. 
 
FOR WHAT ARE YOU 
 LIVING? 
 
For What Are You Living? 
 
 Do YOU ever stop and ask yourself for what you 
 are living? 
 
 Is it for "success" in some undertaking? 
 
 Then what are you doing to produce success? 
 
 No matter how hard you may be working, unless 
 you are finding pleasure and pride in your work, and 
 doing it with cheerfulness, you are not going forward 
 to real success. 
 
 One month of such application of your powers will 
 achieve more for you than a year of grumbling, dogged 
 work, done with unwillingness and dislike of the task. 
 
 Whatever you are doing, reason yourself into a 
 love of your labor, until you can leave it for something 
 more agreeable. 
 
 One excellent way to reason along these lines is to 
 see that every day given to an unpleasant task is 
 bringing it nearer its completion, when you can aban- 
 don it. 
 
 And even if it seems to you that such an end can 
 never be attained, that the work you have in hand is 
 endless, yet, remember that ihoug?it\s the greatest mir- 
 acle worker, and that thought is energy, and that by 
 continual determination, coupled with continual aspir- 
 ation and effort, you can bring any change you desire ^ \ 
 into your life. 
 
 But no good results can be achieved by angry, pur- 
 poseless rebellion or sullen discontent, or work done 
 with hatred and disgust, however well done. 
 
 39 
 
 t 
 
40 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Are you living for happiness? 
 
 What are you doing to produce happiness? 
 
 Are you dressing beyond your means; taking more 
 "days off" than you can afford; buying more things 
 than you need or can use? 
 
 Are you eating and drinking solely for the pleasure 
 of the palate, and for the enjoyment of the moment, 
 and with no thought of what nourishes, or what clogs 
 the system and produces disease? 
 
 Perhaps you say it takes all your strength and time 
 to supply the mere "necessities of life," and you are 
 unhappy because of this fact. 
 
 But what are the necessities of life? 
 
 Were you to be cast on a desert island, with plenty 
 of good water, grains and fruit, honey and nuts, you 
 would be surprised to find how little food it takes to 
 supply the body with nourishment and to sustain good 
 health. 
 
 We do not care to live as we would if obliged to 
 dwell upon a desert island; but that does not prove the 
 luxuries in which we indulge are "life's necessities." 
 
 So, in thinking over your life and its hardships and 
 obligations, do not put the blame on "life's necessities" 
 Avhen you find you are using all your time and money 
 and effort to merely live. 
 
 You are really exhausting yourself to follow stand- 
 ards set by others. 
 
 This can never produce happiness. 
 
 If you wear yourself out in the struggle to buy a 
 motor car, and to sustain one, because your neighbors 
 have this luxury, and not because your income and 
 position make the car a suitable possession, you will 
 never reach happiness. 
 
 Happiness in material things comes only in having 
 
For What Are You Living? 41 
 
 what we really need, when we really need it, and 
 when we can really afford it. 
 
 Happiness comes from within the mind, never from 
 without. 
 ^' That is an old, old statement, but it is eternally true. 
 
 Happiness comes from self-respect, and self-respect 
 comes trom the^nowledge that we are living within 
 our^means, that we owe no man money we cannot 
 eventually pay, that we are able to enjoy the changing 
 seasonsjwithoutTunning in debt to keep up a variety 
 of expensive homes at fashionable resorts, and that we 
 are able to find pleasure in walking when we cannot 
 nde, a nd in keeping at work when we cannot take a 
 vacaJLign. 
 
 Hap piness lies in the consciousness of the privilege^ 
 of life. Unti]_:yoyLrealize^apart from all material con 
 sider ations what a p rivilege]Tjfe is, you cannot be 
 happy. 
 
 Say^over to yourself a dozen of the most familiar 
 names of extravagantly wealthy people in America, 
 and think of the miserable scandals and wretched 
 domestic conditions which have been associated with 
 some member of nearly every one of these families. 
 
 Then you will be able to reason out how little 
 wealth has to do with real happiness. 
 
 Happiness must rest on cliaracter, and character 
 building lies in the power of the poorest man on earth. 
 
 Build yourself a splendid mansion of the mind; then, 
 whether you live in a flat or a mansion, in a tent on 
 the plains, in a tenement in the city or in a cottage by 
 the sea, you will know the secret of happiness. 
 
 And the world is full of 'new thought" literature, 
 which is a good foundation for happiness. Read, 
 think, live rightly and happiness must come. 
 
 Vy 
 
42 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 The populace may run after the dishon- 
 orable man of wealth, hoping for benefits, 
 but it does not admire or respect him. 
 
IGNORE MISFORTUNE 
 
Ignore Misfortune 
 
 Most of us have passed through the unpleasant ex- 
 perience of making a visit to the dentist, for the pur- 
 pose of discovering the cause, and cure, of a toothache. 
 
 When the dentist placed his merciless instruments 
 on the sore tooth, and assured us it must be extracted, 
 or filled, which meant more pain for us, we have 
 groaned in spirit and dreaded the ordeal; but few of 
 us have been so weak and illogical as to heap anath- 
 emas on the dentist for telling us unpleasant facts. 
 
 Hundreds of people approach friends with their 
 troubles and misfortunes, asking some helpful sugges- 
 tion, and if they are told that the cause of their unhap- 
 piness lies in themselves, and are advised to remove 
 it, they become angry and accuse the truthful friend 
 of lack of sympathy. 
 
 A talented and brilliant woman of mature years 
 has for a decade and a half applied to a friend yearly 
 for counsel, sympathy and influence. 
 
 The friend has listened and given such suggestions 
 as possible to the lady, always realizing that her own 
 restless nature and lack of concentration lay at the 
 bottom of her troubles. 
 
 First, it was an unsympathetic and incompatible 
 husband, who caused the lady trouble. There was a 
 lack of means, which the wife tried to supply, and her 
 many failures in various business ventures she always 
 laid at the door of the erratic and unappreciative 
 husband. 
 
 45 
 
46 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Death removed the husband; but the lady found 
 much sorrow left. Her children were either at home, 
 causing her disappointment and anxiety, or away from 
 home, causing her loneliness. 
 
 She went abroad, and made every exertion to 
 come home; but in a few months she felt there was 
 no happiness for her save by going back over seas. 
 Again she returned, and each time she sought a new 
 occupation. 
 
 And always she approached her friend for influence 
 and advice. 
 
 Finally the friend decided to tell her the truth, and 
 to impress upon her mind the necessity of chang- 
 ing her habit of thought, as a preliminary to a change 
 of luck. 
 
 And now the lady feels her friend has been 
 cruel, hard and unsympathetic. "I asked for bread, 
 but you gave me a stone," is her cry. 
 
 But her friend is merely the truthful dentist. 
 
 Never once in all these years has the woman been 
 heard to speak a word of thankfulness regarding any 
 event in her life. 
 
 She envied other people their good luck, and be- 
 moaned her own misfortunes continually. 
 
 This state of mind will bring ill luck to any one 
 who indulges it. 
 
 Just so long as you sit down and enumerate 
 your troubles, your troubles will multiply. 
 
 Just as soon as you begin to be thankful for any- 
 thing, other things will be given you for which to offer 
 thanks. 
 
 The very first step up and away from misfortunes, 
 is when a human soul takes upon itself the entire 
 blame for what has occurred, and says: "Somehow 
 
Ignore Misfortune 47 
 
 and in some way I must have invited this trouble; 
 somehow and in some way I must deserve it, and the 
 experience must be meant for my good. I will make 
 the best of it, and no one shall ever hear me complain." 
 
 That attitude of mind will invariably bring its own 
 comfort with it; and added to the comfort will come 
 hope, and courage, and opportunity to better the con- 
 ditions surrounding the life. 
 
 To every day recount the blessings which are ours 
 is as sure to increase those blessings as the scattering 
 of seed in fallow soil, is a sure way to bring a harvest. 
 
 There is no misfortune or unhappiness or ill luck 
 we cannot change into some measure of success and 
 contentment, by the force of thought and the persist- 
 ency of faith in the goodness of God and the belief 
 that we are God's heirs. 
 
 The great wise men of ancient times wrote: *'Be 
 indi/Jerent to evil.'' 
 
 It was one of the strongest planks in their religious 
 platform. The metaphysicians of a later day have 
 claimed to "discover" a law^ of "denying" evil. But 
 the old seers were much wiser in not even paying it 
 the attention of a denial; they were simply indifferent: 
 they did not recognize it. All their emphasis was 
 placed on the good things of life; and by talking about 
 anything, good or bad, we magnify and multiply it. 
 
 The more you talk about your misfortunes and 
 troubles, the more will come to listen and to be talked 
 about. 
 
 The more you enumerate your blessings, the great- 
 er number you will have to enumerate. 
 
 Believe you were born to good luck. Say so every 
 day and every hour in the day, and thank the Creator 
 of all things for the blessings which are already yours. 
 
 "And unto those who have, more shall be given." 
 
48 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Work, regarded by many as the curse 
 sent upon man for sin, is instead God's 
 Highway to the hills of liappiness. 
 
THE POWER OF PERSONALITY 
 
The Power of Personality 
 
 Whatever your mission in life, do not ignore the 
 fact that your personality and your personal appear- 
 ance have a great influence on your success or failure. 
 
 It is useless to quote the cases of repulsive men and 
 women, badly attired, unkempt aud unwashed, who 
 have achieved glory and fame and obtained power 
 over men and circumstances. There may be such 
 cases; but it requires transcendental genius, and hyp- 
 notic power, to produce such results with suCh con- 
 ditions. 
 
 Very plain, even ugly people, often possess an 
 attractive personality. But they are well groomed 
 and well dressed. 
 
 It is not physical beauty of a classical type that is 
 under discussion, as a necessary factor in success. It 
 is a well-cared-for body, and decent and tastefully 
 worn clothing. 
 
 There is nothing gained by a reformer, when he 
 appeals to the minds and hearts of people with an im- 
 passioned appeal for humanity, and offends their eyes 
 with uncombed hair and disorderly dress. 
 
 A woman who gave her life to the helping of the 
 oppressed, used to lose half her influence by appearing 
 before audiences attired in a slip-shod manner, and 
 with locks of straggling, unkempt hair. 
 
 However much she might have objected to fashion, 
 yet she should have been large enough in her under- 
 standing of human nature, to realize that the eye is one 
 
 51 
 
 J 
 
52 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 avenue to the mind and heart, and to know that the 
 conventional eye, accustomed to a certain neatness of 
 dress and coiffure, would not carry a message of sym- 
 pathy so directly to the mind, if the attire and person- 
 ality of the pleader offended. 
 
 Before we ask people to conform their political, 
 religious or philanthropical ideas to our own, let us 
 conform some of our ideas to suit their preconceived 
 opinions on what constitutes propriety. 
 
 If one is too busy to give any attention to the matter 
 of personal appearance, it is wise to adopt a uniform, 
 as the members of the Salvation Army have done. A 
 uniform is never offensive. 
 
 But if that is impracticable for any reason, then at 
 least take time to be clean, neat and well dressed, 
 however plain and free from adornments the dress 
 may be. 
 
 Nature pays a good deal of attention to apparel. 
 The forests are well dressed and change their clothes 
 four times a year. Man, as a part of Nature, even 
 though he is deprived of his rights and privileges by 
 greed and monopoly, can at least be well brushed, 
 often washed and scrupulously neat in his attire and 
 person. He can cut and comb his hair. 
 
 The philanthropist who wishes to interest the pub- 
 lic in a noble cause, the poet who ^vishes to embellish 
 his own works in the eyes of an audience, the reform- 
 er who hopes to improve the industrial conditions of 
 the country, the evangelist who tries to awaken the 
 spiritual nature of mankind, the scientist who has a 
 message for the world — all these types will find their 
 efforts reinforced with new power if they produce a 
 pleasing effect upon their audiences, by their personal 
 appearance. 
 
The Power of Personality 53 
 
 It means a loss of strength to be frowsy, ugly and 
 ill-dressed. There is no economy, or sense, or reason 
 in it. 
 
 Ugliness breaks a divine law. 
 
 It is worth the time given to its accomplishment 
 when a human being produces the effect of beauty 
 and charm to the casual eye. 
 
 The love of beauty is inherent in every soul. 
 
 It is founded on a great law — the law of cause and 
 effect. Whoever is born into life possessed of beauty, 
 lived in some former incarnation a beautiful life. 
 
 We are all the result of our former lives. Our 
 bodies are the concentrated results of former ac- 
 tions. Nothing proves this more conclusively than the 
 fact that many deformed and ugly people are monu- 
 ments of goodness and virtue. They exhausted their 
 viciousness and outlived their follies in another life, 
 and passed out, repentant, and awakened to the 
 knowledge of their mistakes. 
 
 Nevertheless, they are obliged to carry through 
 this incarnation the physical expression of their form- 
 er deeds, viz: ugliness or deformity. But while here 
 it is right and commendable that they should make 
 every effort to return to the olden beautiful appear- 
 ance. 
 
 Beauty is harmony. Harmony is truth. To 
 violate truth means a discord, and discord produces 
 ugliness. 
 
 Seek for beauty in all things. 
 
 Make yourself as beautiful as possible in this life, 
 first by beautiful thoughts, beautiful desires, beautiful 
 actions; next by care of the body, cleanliness, neat- 
 ness, order and proper dressing. 
 
 Only in that way can you reach your fullest de- 
 velopment and usefulness. 
 
54 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Beauty can be cultivated and grown from a very 
 small and poor beginning, just as Burbank grows 
 glorious flowers from puny bulbs. 
 
 Tlie hody must he grafted upon the spirit to do 
 this. Spirit, mind and body must all work to- 
 gether. 
 
 I believe in great care of the body. The special- 
 ists who teach us how to preserve the eyes, the teeth, 
 the hair, the complexion, the figure, are all blessings to 
 this age of progress. But unless a woman gives more 
 attention to the counsels of that great Inner Specialist, 
 the immortal spirit, and unless she heeds the advice of 
 her brain and cultivates the mental graces, she will 
 make only partial progress in her beauty culture. 
 
 Although you may possess a magic cream which 
 softens your skin and keeps lines at bay; though you 
 have learned the massage which will keep your hair 
 glossy and abundant, and the physical exercises which 
 bring your figure to the curves of beauty, you will not 
 remain beautiful if you are harboring jealous, sarcastic 
 or bitter thoughts in your heart, or if you are indulging 
 in tempers and sulks. 
 
 Every envious, ungracious and irritable mood is 
 like a frost which destroys some of Mr. Burbank's 
 lovely experiments. 
 
 Every loving, forgiving and sympathetic impulse is 
 like a sunbeam upon the plant of beauty. 
 
 Cultivate them assiduously. Even if your nature is 
 not naturally loving you can develop these feelings. 
 ' Look for the things to admire, and to love in each 
 person you meet. Say over the word Love often to 
 yourself, mentally. 
 
 As you walk along the street, or sit in the public 
 conveyance send out a blessing to the world. Say in 
 
The Power of Personality 55 
 
 your heart, **God bless and help every living creature 
 to-day." 
 
 It will bring great peace to your mind and great 
 light to your face. 
 
 And it will cause this feeling to grow in your nature. 
 
 And it will help you to grow beautiful as you 
 grow older. 
 
56 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 A consciousness of striving to live up to 
 one's highest ideals, is the wine of life, 
 and a wine that leaves no bitter taste in 
 the mouth. 
 
COMMON SENSE AND 
 "GOODNESS" 
 
Common Sense and "Goodness" 
 
 Every now and then a -world-weary and folly- 
 weary man marries an innocent, unworldly and "good 
 woman." 
 
 He wants the sweet home life he has not found 
 in the paths of Pleasure, nor in the byways of License. 
 He wants the unmercenary devotion of a loving 
 woman, and he wants to walk forth in the broad 
 light of day, unashamed, with his wife by his side. 
 
 It is the inevitable goal of every worth-while man. 
 
 The world approves of such marriages, and the 
 woman feels that she is filling the highest mission of 
 her sex in reclaiming a lost sheep. 
 
 But how few such woman know the wise, middle 
 course, to walk with such a man. 
 
 It is all very well to listen and believe when he 
 tells you he is happier than he has ever been in his 
 life before, and that his home is dearer to him than 
 any club on earth. 
 
 But it is far from very well if you fall upon his 
 neck and weep, the first time he intimates that he 
 would like to drop in at the club and talk with the old 
 chums for an hour. 
 
 This is the poorest method you could adopt to con- 
 vince him of the greater joys of home. 
 
 There is a certain fascination in club life to most 
 men. There is danger in this fascination to some 
 men. When a man sickens of it and wants a home, 
 it is because he has had nothing but his club, and be- 
 
 59 
 
60 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 cause there is a worthy element in his nature which 
 calls for something better. 
 
 The fact that he should want to visit the old scene 
 now and then, is not an indication that he is sick of 
 home, or that he is wandering from the fold again. 
 
 // the pasture is sweety and tlie sliepJierdess kind 
 and wise, the sheep will not wander far. 
 
 If you have married a man who has been over- 
 fond of the fair sex, and if he is kind and true and lov- 
 ing, do not stand forever upon the alert, lest he be- 
 come disloyal to you. 
 
 Constant surveillance never yet kept a man true. 
 It has made many a man unfaithful. 
 
 Although your husband may have told you over 
 and over, that you are tenfold more pleasing to him 
 than any woman he ever knew before he met you, 
 that does not signify that he might not like to sit by 
 some other at a dinner party, or dance with some 
 other at a cotillon. It does not signify that he would 
 not enjoy talking with others, whom he regards less 
 highly than you. 
 
 In the association Avith the women he does not 
 love, a man often most appreciates the woman he does 
 love.' Should he take a seat by some other woman 
 and converse with her in your presence, do not act 
 sulky, distrait or injured. 
 
 That only makes you ridiculous and unlovable. 
 
 Although your innocence and unworldliness won 
 your husband from the paths of folly, those qualities 
 will not keep him at your side, unless you mingle com- 
 mon sense and tact with them. 
 
 It is easy for many woman to be brilliant, and it is 
 easy for others to be good. But it seems the most dif- 
 ficult thing in the world for a woman to be sensible. 
 
Common Sense and "Goodness " 61 
 
 Genius and virtue are everywhere, but we must 
 search for common sense. 
 
 Woman is called a composite creature, but man 
 is tenfold more composite. When a man has had the 
 whole world catering to everything in his make-up, 
 except his love of virtue, he is not to be made abid- 
 ingly happy with nothing but that quality satisfied. 
 
 He cannot suddenly and permanently change his 
 whole mental structure. 
 
 Be satisfied, then, if your husband gives up the lib- 
 erties and vices which the world allows a bachelor, 
 but do not ask him to relinquish the courtesies and 
 recreations which are every man's privilege. 
 
 Drive Suspicion from your door, and install Confi- 
 dence in its place. Cultivate self-esteem and self-con- 
 fidence, and think, act, talk and live so sweetly and 
 lovingly that rivalry is impossible. 
 
 Make the new life a holiday, not a term of impris- 
 onment. A very good woman who has no human 
 weakness in her nature, is sometimes the devil's tool 
 to drive men to drink. 
 
 Absolute loyalty, absolute morality, absolute honor 
 and cleanliness of life, every woman has the right to 
 ask of her husband. The best of his devotion and the 
 larger portion of his leisure should be given her volun- 
 tarily. But to make him a willing captive should be 
 woman's art, not to make him a life prisoner, and the 
 home a reformatory, and the wife a suspicious warden, 
 always imagining that the prisoner is planning escape. 
 
 The good wife must possess other qualities besides 
 goodness, to render her marriage with a mere man 
 successful. 
 
 Common sense and tact must be two strands of the 
 rope to make it strong enough to act as an anchor for 
 
62 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 the domestic ship. The too good wife relies wholly 
 upon one strand, and the ship breaks anchor. 
 
 If your husband has given up dissipation, do not 
 insist that he must let his cigar go also. 
 
 If he has abandoned the gaming table, do not say 
 that he must give up the social game of cards as well, 
 to make you happy. 
 
 If he has stopped all flirtatious relations with the 
 opposite sex, do not ask him to relinquish all friendly 
 associations with other woman. 
 
 If he has come up out of a lower plane to your alti- 
 tude, do not ask him to stand forever upon a pedestal. 
 Let him walk upon the earth among mortals and be 
 satisfied. 
 
 In order to think him a good man, do not ask him 
 to be an angel. 
 
 Wholesome, normal, sensible human beings are 
 what we all need to be while on earth, not disem- 
 bodied spirits. 
 
 Clean thoughts, clean habits, clean bodies and 
 happy hearts and faces, help to make beautiful lives 
 and homes. 
 
 But the too good wife sometimes sees evil where it 
 does not exist, and by suspicion and insinuation ruins 
 her own chances of happiness. 
 
 In order to be a good wife, do not be "too good." 
 
 And remember 'Thoughts are things" and as you 
 continually think of your husband, so you are helping 
 him to be. 
 
 The star sheds radiance on a million worlds, 
 The sea is prodigal with waves, and yet 
 No luster from the star is lost, and not 
 One drop is missing from the ocean tides. 
 
GOOD BUSINESS" 
 
"Good Business" 
 
 Before real continued success can come to a 
 woman in any self-supporting realm, she must have 
 several things of which she seems unconscious to-day. 
 
 I fear it is the exceptional business woman who 
 has a realization of the necessity of paying her bills 
 promptly, and of making her word as good as her note 
 in money matters. 
 
 I shall never forget the mortification I felt upon a 
 time, when in a strange place, away from home, I gave 
 the name of a well-known business woman as ref- 
 erence in a financial matter. I knew her as a most 
 ambitious and seemingly successful business woman, 
 and was astonished to be told that her note was not 
 considered of any value, and that in her own town 
 she could not obtain credit because it was so difficult 
 to collect bills when due. 
 
 Afterward I heard the woman bemoan the cruelty 
 of the world toward a woman who tried to make her 
 own way. 
 
 Of course our sex has not been accustomed to 
 assume large responsibilities, and it is difficult to grasp 
 the situation at once. We have been for centuries the 
 recipients of the gallant attentions or tyrannical espion- 
 age of men, and to become their associates in business 
 is quite another matter. 
 
 But since woman has entered upon this field, let 
 her keep her shield bright and her sword sharp, and 
 her sense of honor keen. 
 
 5 '65 
 
66 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Another point to be observed is the necessity to 
 epitomize her ideas and curtail her words in business 
 conversation. One of woman's greatest hindrances 
 to success is her loquaciousness. 
 
 The woman who places any value on the worth 
 of her own time or that of another, and displays it by 
 economizing both, is worthy of a gold medal, so un- 
 usual a specimen is she. 
 
 Every word "sve utter means an expenditure of a 
 certain amount of vital force; yet women waste this 
 force as recklessly as if it were dross instead of pure 
 gold. 
 
 They talk above, below and around the point at 
 issue, using ten phrases to express what could be 
 better said in one. 
 
 Woman's conception of the importance and value 
 of time is conveyed in a smiling, "I know you are 
 awfully busy, and I fear I am trespassing upon your 
 time," while she immediately proceeds to talk for 
 another half hour upon something which has nothing 
 to do with the purpose of her call. 
 
 In social life the woman who flits from topic to 
 topic like a butterfly from flower to flower, is delight- 
 ful. She rests, entertains, amuses and often instructs 
 her listeners. 
 
 The woman who is too serious, and one-sided in 
 social life, is worse, if anything, than the one who is 
 too profuse and diffusive in business. 
 
 This seems to be the point which she finds difficult 
 to realize. 
 
 It is the exceptional man who goes into a busy 
 office or study, and takes half an hour to do his errand. 
 
 It is the exceptional woman who takes less. 
 
 With all woman's desire to be unselfish, and, 
 
"Good Business" 67 
 
 despite the foundation of unselfishness upon which 
 her nature is built, she is thoughtless and inconsiderate 
 by her wasteful verbosity, as a rule, in business matters. 
 
 The woman who is direct, concise and expeditious 
 in her methods is as unusual as a white blackbird. 
 
 She seldom lacks employment. This quality of 
 dispatch is one of the fundamental laws of success, 
 and nothing reaches a man's business heart sooner 
 than a delicate consideration of the great value of his 
 time, and an indication that your own, as well, is 
 worth conserving. 
 
 To every woman or girl who is about to seek 
 influence, advice or a position, I offer this counsel: 
 
 Before you set forth on your errand, think out 
 clearly what you want. 
 
 Then think of a few concise sentences by which 
 you may express your wish. 
 
 Keep to your point. Do not tell the story of your 
 life, or describe your genealogical descent from William 
 the Conqueror, to the man you hope will give you 
 employment. 
 
 Talk about the subject which called you into his 
 presence, and talk with directness and fluency, and 
 get done with it and go away. 
 
 If you do not win the man's patronage, you will at 
 least win his respect and gratitude. 
 
 And you will have saved your own time and nerve 
 force for other occasions. 
 
68 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 One of the most inspiring objects on 
 earth, is a strong man bearing the burdens 
 of a lot of weaklings of both sexes, all 
 unconscious of his own need of sym- 
 pathy. 
 
THE TRAPEZE PERFORMER 
 
The Trapeze Performer 
 
 Watching the wonderful work of a tight-rope and 
 trapeze performer, the question arose: What good 
 does it all do? Where is the benefit to the human 
 race in such a sacrifice of time, as this athlete has been 
 obliged to make, in order to reach his astonishing pro- 
 ficiency in a seemingly useless achievement? 
 
 Yet this man, and all others who have attained skill 
 in the same difficult line of endeavor, are benefactors 
 to the human race, if we will look at the matter ana- 
 lytically. 
 
 They teach us what can be accomplished in any 
 direction by unswerving purpose, unflagging will and 
 persistent patience. 
 
 To jump through the air, to catch the hands of 
 another man who is hanging by his feet from a trapeze 
 and oscillating to and fro, to drop those hands and turn 
 the body completely around in midair and then catch 
 the perch from which the original leap is made and 
 vault as lightly to a seat as a bird settles upon a branch, 
 is an achievement which no human being can accom- 
 plish, save by one method. 
 
 And this method is direct purpose, unfaltering 
 effort and daily practice. 
 
 And this method will bring success to any effort, in 
 any line, for any human being who puts it into execu- 
 tion. 
 
 When I think of the marvelous control over his 
 body, and over the laws of gravitation which this 
 
 71 
 
72 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 trapeze performer exhibited, I wonder that any man 
 or woman can fail in anything attempted. 
 
 When I think of the unfathomed depths of power 
 lying in every immortal mmcL I wonder that the world 
 is not filled with hosts of successful people. 
 
 There is no such a thing as failure for any one who 
 sets forth to his goal, as the trapeze performer set forth 
 to attain his aim, and who keeps at his work with the 
 same persistency. 
 
 If you are seeking health, wealth, usefulness, skill 
 in any direction, there is nothing, and no one, who can 
 hinder your attainment of the coveted boon, if you 
 are willing to work and wait as the man on the tra- 
 peze worked and waited before he reached his present 
 superb success: for such excellence in any vocation is 
 nothing short of "superb," because it means concentra- 
 tion and persistence. 
 
 If you have a habit you want to overcome you can 
 do it. i^To control the mind by the mind is as easy as 
 to control the laws of gravitation and the movements 
 of the body, but both require steady, daily, unremitting 
 practice. 
 
 If you want to succeed in any business or profession 
 the man-on-the-trapeze should be an inspiration to 
 you. 
 
 You may consider yourself a much superior being 
 in the social scale and on the intellectual plane, and 
 more highly developed spiritually, but you are this 
 man's inferior if you are complaining that you have no 
 success, and that the world does not use you fairly, 
 and that you have no influence, and that only the man 
 with a pull wins. 
 
 All this talk proves you to be the inferior of the 
 man-on-the-trapeze, who stands at the head of his 
 
The Trapeze Performer 73 
 
 profession because he kept working, practising and 
 trying for the perfection he knew could be won only 
 hy Ms own persistent efforts. 
 
 That is all success means. 
 
 Choose your vocation and go ahead. Kothing can 
 hinder you hut your own lack of purpose and applica- 
 tion. 
 
 Do you possess the power of concentration? 
 
 Can you focus your mind upon any subject for any 
 length of time? 
 
 If you believe you can, put the matter to the test. 
 
 Sit down for five minutes (just five minutes before 
 the clock strikes the hour) and try and think of only 
 one thing. 
 
 Take the word Light, or the word Strength, and 
 try to think of the meaning; or take the face of any one 
 you love, and think of its features, excluding all other 
 thoughts; or imagine the earth before any sign of life 
 existed upon it, with only verdure, water and the seas, 
 and think of that as a symbol of the word Serenity. 
 
 If you succeed in holding your mind resolutely to 
 any one of these ideas for even one minute^ with- 
 out the intrusion of twenty other thoughts, you may 
 believe yourself well prepared for any mental effort. 
 
 And you may know that you are the exception to 
 the rule of intellectual humanity. 
 
 Not one mind in one hundred can do this simple 
 thing. 
 
 Not one mind in one hundred in America. 
 
 Mind scattering is almost universal here. 
 
 Our public schools, with all the good things they 
 do for the masses, weaken the power of concentration 
 in the majority of pupils. 
 
 The average normal child, born with good health 
 
74 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 and a vigorous body, possesses the ability to hold its 
 mind to one thought. 
 
 It is after the mind begins to be crowded with 
 a multiplicity of ideas that the thought scattering proc- 
 ess sets in. 
 
 Many people imagine that concentration means to 
 think of only one subject all the time. 
 
 But the person who does that becomes a mono- 
 maniac, and a bore, however he may succeed in his 
 chosen line. 
 
 The successful musician, and actor, and w^riter, 
 and inventor, is often a being of this kind, and heaven 
 preserve us from his society. 
 
 He not only thinks of one subject continually, but 
 he talTcs it continually, which makes men and women 
 with a repertoire of ideas fly at his approach. There 
 is no necessity of this kind of concentration to insure 
 success. 
 
 All that is needed is to think of one subject at a 
 time; to put all your mental machinery in action on 
 that subject. 
 
 If you have selected music as a profession, think, 
 talk and dream music for a certain period of time 
 each day. 
 
 Drive away all other thoughts while you are work- 
 ing on those lines. 
 
 But when you have finished your allotted task, and 
 the time you have set apart for this study expires, then 
 concentrate upon whatever subject presents itself with 
 equal persistency. 
 
 If some friend talks to you of books, fashion or cur- 
 rent events do not let your mind roam back to music 
 and give but half attention to his conversation. That is 
 the way thought scattering begins with many of us; 
 
The Trapeze Performer 75 
 
 And thought scattering is tenfold more wasteful and 
 wicked than time and money scattering. 
 
 Nothing in this life is so precious as our mental 
 forces. 
 
 Upon our use of them depends our spiritual de- 
 velopment, our usefulness to humanity and our 
 physical well being, to a great degree. 
 
 I am not discussing this topic (or any topic) from 
 a lofty altitude of one who claims to be a model of 
 achievement in that particular line. I discuss it rather, 
 and all kindred subjects, as one who has learned the 
 need of such discussions from personal experience, 
 and innumerable mistakes, and consequent regrets. 
 
 The one remedy for this tendency to idea scatter- 
 ing is to put the check of Will upon the mind; to prac- 
 tise listening with attention, no matter how slightly 
 interested we may be; make the interview short, if the 
 topic discussed is boring you, but while you listen in 
 seeming, listen in fact. Think of nothing but of what 
 you are hearing. Pay absolute attention. No matter 
 how trivial the duty you are performing, devote your 
 whole mind to its performance. 
 
 Then, when it is accomplished, turn your mental 
 powers in some other direction with equal steadiness. 
 
 Let your mind be the search light, and your will 
 the hand that turns it from one point to another. 
 
 But while it falls in any one spot, Iceep it steady. 
 
 That is what concentration means. 
 
 That is what the first step to success means. 
 
 It is slow work to regain this lost power. 
 
 It is like regaining lost health. But it can he done. 
 
 Think of only one thing at a time. Focus all your 
 faculties on that one while it is the matter under con- 
 sideration. 
 
76 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Practice of this kind, steadily followed, will make 
 you master of your own mind, and master of what- 
 ever subject you may choose to consider. 
 
 By lightnings unguided destruction is hurled, 
 
 But chained and directed they gladden the world. 
 
THE HIGH CALLING OF 
 FATHERHOOD 
 
The High Calling of Fatherhood 
 
 There could be no more important work for a 
 nation than the establishing of institutions and the 
 training of men and women for the proper knowledge 
 of the right generation of human beings. 
 
 New York City provides a fund for a large aqua- 
 rium. The Zoo is another city institution where young 
 animals are protected before birth and after; and should 
 the male animal indicate dangerous tendencies toward 
 his mate before the birth of the young, or afterward 
 toward his offspring, he is at once placed where he 
 cannot do damage. 
 
 No stock breeder would permit his brood animal 
 to suffer injury at such a period; she is protected in 
 every way in order that her offspring may be strong 
 and well. 
 
 Yet all over the United States expectant mothers 
 are left to the careless and ignorant treatment of men 
 who know no more about the responsibilities of father- 
 hood, or of prenatal influences, than they know of 
 the social conditions of Mars. 
 
 In the lower walks of life, where people are 
 crowded in small rooms and obliged to live in close 
 quarters, expectant mothers are forced to endure the 
 odors of cheap drink and tobacco, and to hear taunts 
 and insults from intoxicated husbands, who have never 
 been told that a woman is sensitive to an abnormal 
 degree at this period of her life. In the higher 
 walks, thousands of mothers are suffering from neglect 
 and indifference, or refined abuse, from husbands 
 
 79 
 
80 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 who are college graduates and who occupy important 
 positions socially. 
 
 It would be an admirable undertaking for the Gov- 
 ernment to establish in every large city, a free institution 
 where such women could pass two or three hours 
 each day, with cheerful surroundings: and three or 
 four months, at a nominal price, if unfortunately 
 situated at home. Whatever the original expense of 
 such an undertaking might necessitate, it would be 
 saved in a generation by the lessening of disease and 
 crime and poverty among the masses. 
 
 Added to this, each college should be obliged to 
 add a department through which every young man 
 must pass before granted a diploma. The most skilled 
 physicians should be employed as instructors in this 
 department. It is quite as important to th^ world 
 that young men know what it means to propagate 
 the species, as that they become such expert athletes 
 that Yale conquers Harvard, or Harvard Princeton at 
 football. Many cases might be found, if the annals of 
 the courts were studied, where men who graduated 
 with brilliant honors from famous colleges, proved 
 brutal husbands to wives who were expectant mothers. 
 The man's brain had been filled with all kinds of 
 knowledge save that which gave him an understand- 
 ing of fatherhood and motherhood. However dis- 
 illusioned or enraged he may become with a woman 
 he has chosen as his wife, there is not one man in a 
 million who would missuse his own unborn child 
 once he knew the vital influence of the mother's 
 mind upon it during those months. Women are 
 beginning to understand these matters, and mothers 
 are awakening to the fact that daughters must be 
 educated along these lines, if they ever contemplate 
 marriage. 
 
The High Calling of Fatherhood 81 
 
 But how is it possible for a mother to give her 
 child wholesome, and sane and healthful prenatal 
 conditions, if men continue to walk in blind, black 
 ignorance, and if the laws of the land make no pro- 
 vision for the mother's protection, and offer no asylum 
 for her retreat from disastrous environment at this 
 important time? It is the great work of the future, 
 the vital subject of the present. Not until the intel- 
 ligent and educated classes realize this and call science 
 to aid in the education of men as fathers, can we hope 
 for a marked improvement in the human race. 
 
 A woman said recently: "Many and many a poor 
 wife does not have the considerate treatment accorded 
 her which is given the female horse or dog. Of all 
 the animals in the world there is no male that treats 
 his mate as inconsiderately as does man, especially at 
 the time in her life when she most needs his care. I 
 sometimes think that the State should, for its own pro- 
 tection, look after poor women in that condition; for 
 criminals, idiots and deformities are produced by ill- 
 treatment of the mother before she bears the child." 
 
 Now a personal word to you, Mr. Expectant 
 Father. 
 
 Your wife is to bear you a child. Whether you 
 are pleased or otherwise, you are her collaborator in 
 parenthood, and you are the father of an unborn soul. 
 
 Just how are you treating the mother of that help- 
 less soul? 
 
 Upon your attitude to your wife depends in a large 
 degree the future of your child. The mother's mind 
 is like a chisel at work day and night, awake or asleep, 
 molding the mind, shaping the body of her child 
 and yours. 
 
 If you are tender, loving, considerate and patient, 
 
82 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 you are causing the best qualities of the human heart 
 to be given to your son or daughter. 
 
 If you are harsh, irritable, impatient and selfish, 
 you are awakening the unworthy side of your wife's 
 nature and giving your offspring a disposition and 
 temperament which mean distress for itself and 
 others. 
 
 What would you think of a man who was having 
 a new mansion built, and who stood at one side and 
 threw stones into the plate glass windows and ink 
 upon the fresh paint and thrust knives into the newly 
 papered walls? Would you not think he was insane 
 and deserving of a strait- jacket? 
 
 Yet if you are saying unkind or cruel words to 
 your wife; if you are misusing her in any way, or 
 wounding her feelings, or failing to give her the 
 tenderest care and protection and love at this time, 
 you are doing a far more insane and reckless act than 
 the wrecking of a house would indicate. 
 
 You are marring an immortal soul, besides leaving 
 scars upon the heart of the woman you chose to be 
 the mother of your children. 
 
 Science is doing much to exterminate dangerous 
 insects and reptiles and savage beasts from the earth. 
 It is being done in the interests of humanity, it is said. 
 
 But the most dangerous beast to humanity today, 
 the most awful monster on earth, is the father who 
 maltreats and misuses the mother of an unborn child. 
 
 Yet they are allowed to live and thrive by hun- 
 dreds in every class of society. Little or nothing is 
 done to educate men in this matter. Money is being 
 sent to Japan and India, where motherhood is regarded 
 as sacred, to convert the heathen to our religion, 
 while our own Christian men are crushing the souls 
 
The High Calling of Fatherhood 83 
 
 out of expectant mothers every day in the year, either 
 by indifference and neglect or absolute cruelty. 
 
 There is no time in life when a woman so needs 
 the friendship of her husband as during this wonderful 
 parental period. 
 
 If his heart is with her and he is unselfish, thought- 
 ful and kind, and full of sympathy, then the months 
 are the most beautiful, the most holy, the most sublime 
 that can come to mortal. 
 
 If he is the reverse, they are one continual 
 Gethsemane. *» 
 
 No man, however, sympathetic or wise in scientific 
 knowledge, can form the least idea of the condition of 
 a woman's nervous system at this time. 
 
 It is an experience only mothers can understand. 
 
 Not one man in a hundred thousand ever hears the 
 prenatal period referred to before he enters upon the 
 duties of fatherhood himself. 
 
 Your education in this matter was probably neg- 
 lected. I am trying to give you a kindergarten lesson 
 right here. 
 
 For the sake of your unborn child, if not for the 
 sake of human decency and the wife you married, let 
 what I have said sinlc in, and make you treat your 
 child's mother with affection and kindness until your 
 baby is born. 
 
 Then if you cannot develop enough manhood to 
 keep up the treatment I hope she will take her baby 
 and go away where she can bring it up peacefully. 
 
 If you saw a man sticking pins into a small, helpless 
 baby in its cradle would you not feel impelled to 
 knock him down? Well, every time you say a cruel, 
 mean word to your w^ife you are doing an act like that 
 — a coward's act. 
 
84 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Immortal Life is something to be earned 
 
 By slow selt-conquest, comradeship with pain 
 
 And patient seeking after higher truths. 
 
THE HIGH CALLING OF 
 MOTHERHOOD 
 
The High Calling of Motherhood 
 
 It is not so much what you are doing, my dear 
 madame, before your child is born, as what you are 
 thinking , which molds its character. 
 
 Over and over I would reiterate what I believe to 
 be a great truth — children inherit the suppressed 
 tendencies of their parents — those things of which the 
 parents think and dream and long to do. 
 
 Therefore, cultivate your mind to dwell upon 
 good and worthy and beautiful desires. Read tales of 
 noble achievements and histories of great characters, 
 and infuse all your thoughts with high aspirations. 
 
 A story comes to me from a personal friend who 
 sings. Before the birth of her son she sang hours at a 
 time day after day, and week after week. Her voice 
 was in excellent condition, and she gave full vent to 
 her song impulses. 
 
 The child cries at the sound of music and shows 
 an evident distaste for it. He is nearly eight years 
 old now and cannot carry the simplest air. This is 
 because the mother exhausted her own desire to sing 
 during the prenatal period. 
 
 Had she thought of music, listened to it and 
 enjoyed it mentally and with the imagination, it is 
 more than probable that her child would have been 
 musical. Mothers who exhaust their nervous systems 
 in any line of endeavor do not bestow the ability to 
 achieve in this same line upon their children. 
 
 The camera which receives the impression must he 
 still, 
 
 87 
 
88 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 If you would give your child certain qualities learn 
 to he still, to think, and to feel strongly and earnestly. 
 
 Watch yourself that you do not indulge in disagree- 
 able moods toward any one. Forgive your enemies 
 and wish them well. Cast out bitterness and anger. 
 You are no longer your own mistress, remember; you 
 belong to your unborn child. Your responsibility is 
 tremendous. 
 
 A woman who permitted her thoughts to dwell on 
 vicious and dishonest themes sent two hundred crimi- 
 nals into the world in four generations. 
 
 So powerful was her concentration of vicious 
 thought, that she was like a poisoned spring, which 
 sends out its death-dealing streams over the land. 
 
 Do not permit your eyes to rest upon deformity or 
 ugliness for any length of time if you can avoid it. If 
 you are compelled to be in its presence, close your 
 eyes and imagine beauty all about you. 
 
 When you fall asleep picture beautiful things in 
 your mind and ask all good angels to guard you and 
 your child. 
 
 Believe you are to bring a blessing into the world. 
 
 The expectant mother should avoid reading or 
 thinking or talking about cruelty, sin, folly, or sorrow. 
 She should hear all the good music possible, look at 
 beautiful pictures and objects in nature, and, if she 
 desires her child to possess some one talent, let her 
 read the lives of men and women who have been 
 known in that especial work, and think about them 
 after she closes the book. 
 
 Much outdoor life and deep breathing of pure air 
 will help to produce a robust child with strong lung's. 
 
 One hundred deep inhalations should be taken 
 every morning with closed lips, and the whole lungs 
 
The High Calling of Motherhood 89 
 
 filled with fresh air. During the daily promenade, 
 inhale while taking seven steps, and think of the seven 
 most important qualities you would wish your child 
 to possess, such as goodness, health, wisdom, talent, 
 beauty, affection, influence. 
 
 With each breath believe you are inhaling one of 
 these qualities from God's great reservoir for your 
 child. 
 
 Then exhale slowly, and repeat the exercise until 
 slightly weary. 
 
 Avoid thinking of any one you do not like, or 
 dwelling on disagreeable or annoying events. 
 
 When depressed moods come, get out in the open 
 air and begin your breathing exercises. 
 
 Think of all the noble people who have made 
 the world better for living in it, and ask at your 
 library for books about the great philanthropists and 
 philosophers, poets, painters and artists. 
 
 Cultivate a reverent state of mind — look at the 
 stars, and realize how grand and glorious is this uni- 
 verse, and how wonderful the Creator who conceived 
 and carried out the design. Worship Him with all 
 your heart, and remember that your child is a reflec- 
 tion of Him, and believe that you are to be the mothef 
 of one of God's own kin. 
 
 Thank Him hourly for the great privilege of 
 motherhood, and let no worry or anxiety regarding 
 the future depress you. Say, — I am that most sacred 
 thing on earth, an expectant mother — I am chosen by 
 God for a great work — and all will be well with me. 
 
 If you keep in this frame of mind, all will be well 
 with you and with your child. 
 
90 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Whoever was begotten by pure love, 
 And came desired and welcomed into life, 
 Is of immaculate conception. 
 
THOUGHT BUILDING FOR 
 CHILDREN 
 
Thought Building for Children 
 
 What are you doing to prevent your children from 
 annoying others? 
 
 The fact that they do not annoy you is not suffi- 
 cient; the fact that you find them the most interesting 
 and remarkable children in the world is not convinc- 
 ing, and the fact that they are exceptionally bright and 
 intelligent or astonishingly intellectual, even, has noth- 
 ing to do with the discussion. 
 
 Have you taught your boys that they are to wait 
 for all women and all older people to pass through a 
 door or into a public conveyance? Or do you permit 
 them to push and jostle their way through a company 
 or crowd and monopolize the most desirable places in 
 vehicles? 
 
 It is so seldom one finds an American lad of any 
 class who steps aside to let a woman precede him in 
 public places, that he attracts immediate attention 
 when he is encountered. 
 
 The average boy thrusts his elbows against the ribs 
 of the man or woman beside him and dives forward 
 into car or omnibus at the risk of tripping the unwary 
 or toppling over the weak, and if this occurs, no 
 word of apology is ever heard from the lips of Master 
 Stars and Stripes. 
 
 I have yet to hear an American parent reprove 
 a child for a performance of this kind. But when 
 others have administered reproof he has met with 
 "fond parents' " defense, "He is only a boy. He didn't 
 
 93 
 
94 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 mean it, of course. One can't expect children to be 
 thoughtful as their elders," and so on. 
 
 But one can expect their elders to teach them the 
 rudiments of behavior. 
 
 Have you told your children that the toothpick 
 should no more be employed in public than the tooth- 
 brush, or do you allow your representatives to parade 
 through public halls and sit on verandas and in draw- 
 ing rooms, or even at table, and wield this disgusting 
 weapon ? 
 
 If you have neglected this very important item in 
 their education, let me beg of you to instruct them 
 from this hour forward to attend to their toilet matters 
 in privacy and without compulsory witnesses. 
 
 If your children say that well-dressed men and 
 women commit this same offense against decency and 
 good taste, assure them that they were unfortunate in 
 having no well-bred parents to teach them better 
 manners, and that they are not to be emulated, but 
 pitied. 
 
 Have you spoken to your daughters regarding their 
 high-pitched voices, or do you hear them shriek 
 through house, hotel and street like the steamboat 
 whistle or the trolley gong, with no word of protest? 
 
 And do you smilingly say, "MoUie is ro full of life, 
 you can always tell when she is around." 
 
 Do you train your boys and girls when at table to 
 wait until the process of mastication is finished before 
 indulging in active conversation? 
 
 Are your children allowed to stand upon the seats 
 of public conveyances with dusty and muddy feet? 
 
 Do they interrupt the conversation of older people, 
 with no apology, and enter rooms with the whoop of 
 wild Indians on the ^varpath? 
 
Thought Building for Children 95 
 
 There is no amount of education you can bestow 
 upon your boys and girls which will make them cul- 
 tured or well-bred members of society unless you 
 build this groundwork of decent manners and habits 
 in their early youth. 
 
 For now the plastic brain cells are being formed, 
 and you are the potter who can shape your children 
 as you will, if you care to give the great work your 
 careful, loving attention. 
 
 I talked recently with a gifted young man, whose 
 only obstacle to great success in his chosen work is 
 lack of sdf -confidence. This man was brought up by 
 a father who continually ridiculed his son, in early 
 youth, in order to prevent him from becoming 
 egotistical. 
 
 Whatever the boy attempted to do, the father 
 declared impossible, and laughed at his conceit for 
 supposing he possessed the requisite qualities for such 
 an endeavor. 
 
 The son was specially dowered by nature and 
 temperament for the dramatic profession and is now 
 playing in third-class companies, while he would be 
 a capable leading man in the best theatrical com- 
 panies, had he been encouraged and made to helieve in 
 himself. 
 
 "Always when I approach a manager," he said, "I 
 shrink in my own estimation, and remember things 
 my father said to me of my egotism and presumption. 
 And the manager, of course, takes my own estimate 
 of myself, and I do not get the role I want." 
 
 There are many mothers making the same deplora- 
 ble mistake with a young daughter. 
 
 They are so concerned lest the girl become vain 
 and silly with pride of beauty or attainments, that they 
 
96 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 ridicule her personal appearance, and her mental 
 achievements. 
 
 A beautiful and accomplished woman assured a 
 friend that she suffered agonies when entering a room 
 because of her mother's ridicule during her adolescence. 
 
 The very first duty a parent owes a child is to give 
 that child confidence in itself. 
 
 Such confidence is not egotism. It can accompany 
 modesty and humility of spirit, if properly developed. 
 
 There was a little boy who gave evidence, in early 
 childhood, of unusual literary talent. 
 
 *'You are gifted by the Creator," his parents told 
 him, "and you will one day make a name which shall 
 be known all over the world. You must study and 
 observe and grow, and write as you feel." , 
 
 Every crude effort was praised, and the boy grew 
 up with a belief in his talents, which the future justi- 
 fied, and the world acknowledged his gifts in early 
 life. 
 
 Praise and encouragement from parents are the 
 foundation of success for many a man and woman; 
 and ridicule and discouragement from the same source 
 have caused many a human being's failure to reach 
 the heights. 
 
 Believe in your children and teach them to believe 
 in themselves. It is better than giving them an 
 inheritance of houses and lands. 
 
 Children can be educated in the finer things of life, 
 and given high standards without knowing they are 
 being taught, if the parents possess tact and forethought 
 
 As you walk along the streets with your children, 
 what do you talk about? 
 
 Are you calling their attention to the shop Avindows 
 and sighing to think that you cannot buy all the beau- 
 
Thought Building for Children 97 
 
 tiful things displayed to whet the appetite for adorn- 
 ment? 
 
 Do you reply to their importuning for toys and 
 articles of clothing by the statement that you are "too 
 poor" to buy these things, and then do you follow this 
 remark by exclamations of admiration and envy over 
 the handsome equipages, with richly gowned occu- 
 pants, and say, "It must be lovely to be rich?" 
 
 If this is your method of entertaining your children 
 it would be far wiser to leave them at home. 
 
 You are educating them in discontent, jealousy 
 and a false idea of what constitutes happiness. 
 
 You are awakening a precocious longing for wealth 
 and display and creating those "class distinctions" 
 which so many good people declare are created by 
 the "sensational newspapers." 
 
 If you see a man or boy pushing ahead of women 
 through doors or into cars and stages, say to your boy 
 how sorry you should be to have him so rude. 
 
 Impress upon him the necessity of politeness and 
 courtesy in public places as an attribute of manliness. 
 
 Thank him when he opens a door for you or steps 
 aside for you to enter a car, or when he rises to give 
 another a seat. 
 
 In all these small and simple ways you can be 
 giving your children the foundation of a most valu- 
 able education. 
 
 It lies in the power of the mother to make her 
 children what she desires them to be if she begins 
 early enough and keeps at the task day after day. 
 
 A child's brain is being built the first fourteen years 
 of life, and it is the mother's privilege to direct the 
 structure and awaken the noblest and most admirable 
 qualities bv giving them thought exercises. 
 
98 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Each thought which passes through a child's mind 
 is leaving its physical impress on the brain and making 
 that thought easier to occur again. Pave the way for 
 good and great thoughts. 
 
 Rejoice in w^illing service ; 
 Who loves will labor most. 
 
THE NEW THOUGHT OF 
 ECONOMY 
 
The New Thought of Economy 
 
 One of the first lessons drilled into the youthful 
 brain by the gimlet of continual homilies is the idea of 
 economy. 
 
 "Waste not, want not:" "Save the pennies and 
 the dollars will take care of themselves," and a score of 
 other old adages are given the young mind, to train it 
 in the way it should go. 
 
 But while economy is a virtue, parsimony is a 
 crime; and few parents draw a distinction between 
 the two in talking to their children. I believe in sav- 
 ing a portion of one's earnings; I believe in keeping in 
 advance of necessity, because it means usefulness, 
 instead of dependence; lifting, instead of leaning; 
 hopefulness, instead of fear, m facing the future. 
 
 But of two misfortunes, I would rather see a child 
 lean toward extravagance, if that extravagance were 
 coupled with generosity, than toward a miserly tend- 
 ency to accumulate and save. 
 
 Nothing dwarfs the whole nature more than parsi- 
 mony. A young man whose leading thought is econ^ 
 omy, and who counts every cent over and over with 
 miserly care before indulging in a necessary expendi- 
 ture or a graceful courtesy toward a friend, is certain 
 to grow narrow m his sympathies and prejudiced in 
 his opinions, and, like a dwarfed, perverted vine, his 
 tendrils will turn in and cling about himself instead of 
 reaching out to adorn the world. 
 
 If you are just setting forth in life with an ambition 
 to achieve, let generosity stand side by side with 
 
 101 
 
102 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 economy in your heart. If they are not there naturally, 
 plant the seeds and water them well, and expose the 
 soil to the sun of Love. 
 
 They will grow, and great will be the harvest. 
 
 If you earn enough to save a few dollars a month 
 out of your wages, make a rule of investing at least 
 one dollar in some good cause for humanity. Do not 
 give it to the first street beggar or the first professional 
 letter-writer who asks — that will be encouraging 
 pauperism — but find some one more needy than 
 yourself or more unfortunate, and plant your seed of 
 generosity both for the sake of the one who will be 
 benefited and for your own moral growth. 
 
 While the deplorable and unworthy conditions 
 continue to exist which make "tipping" waiters and 
 domestics in restaurants and hotels an accepted part 
 of service, do not try to shirk this custom. 
 
 If you can afford to frequent such places (with no 
 matter what economy) you can afford to "tip" your 
 attendant. You can never reform the country nor 
 institute new laws by denying a waiter a fee, though 
 many "reformers" go no farther than this in their 
 efforts at Socialism. 
 
 And you can dwarf your own nature by trying to 
 save a few dimes and quarters in this mean and 
 unworthy fashion. 
 
 Give something, a few pennies, if no more, now 
 and then, to aid the animal protective society and the 
 humane educational organizations. 
 
 Children and animals never impose upon charity, 
 and you may be sure whatever you do in their behalf 
 is well bestowed. 
 
 Consider all such use of your small earnings as 
 seed well planted. So surely as you cultivate this 
 
The New Thought of Economy 103 
 
 spirit of generosity and helpfulness so surely shall 
 prosperity attend your effort as the years pass, and so 
 surely shall your enterprises meet with success. 
 
 Besides this you will act as a stimulant to others 
 who have more means to bestow : and your few dol- 
 lars shall be augmented by other dollars until an end- 
 less chain is formed, and tight purses shall be opened 
 and hard hearts softened by your example. 
 
 Never for an instant allow yourself to fear poverty 
 and dependence. There is a type of so-called gener- 
 osity which leads to the Almshouse. Many a man 
 who is called **a generous, open-hearted fellow, who 
 puts his hand in his pocket for every friend," dies 
 bankrupt and homeless. But investigation will prove 
 it is his wastefulness ^ outside of his generosity, which 
 brings the disaster. 
 
 Nothing is wasted which we give willingly and 
 lovingly to others, even if we find it was not worthily 
 bestowed, for the impulse left its benefit on our lives 
 and characters; but the money spent in show, display 
 and dissipation, in feasting and in extravagant enter- 
 taining in a desire to outdo our neighbors, or to make 
 our enemies jealous, that indeed is the waste which 
 leads to want. 
 
 Back of each visible being stands a host of invisi- 
 bles, and by the nature of your thoughts and desires 
 and ambitions you determine the class of these invisi- 
 bles who come at bidding to lend countenance and 
 strength to your undertakings. 
 
 Decide for yourself whether you desire the co- 
 operation of the earth-bound gourmand, drunkard and 
 race-track suicide, the miser and money-hoarder, or 
 the great Spirits of Light, who were the philanthropists 
 and helpers of earth when here. 
 
104 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 We choose our unseen companions as we choose 
 our earthly associates, and by the company we keep 
 are we known here and beyond. 
 
 Were I the mother of a marriageable daughter ^I 
 should hesitate to see her become the wife of a man 
 noted primarily for his economy. The influence of a 
 man upon a woman in matters concerning money is 
 far-reaching and subtle; I have known a woman of 
 financial independence and generous proclivities to 
 become utterly transformed by marriage with a 
 man whose one idea of hfe was the accumulation of 
 money. 
 
 And let this mania take root in a nature and it 
 renders it impervious even to the fear of ridicule and 
 scorn of associates; for such a man believes always 
 that in the long run his money will make him a power 
 and bring him the respect he is forfeiting by his petty 
 meannesses along the way. 
 
 But that is an error which he either discovers too 
 late or else remains in ignorance of to the end, which 
 is sadder still. 
 
 The man or woman who waits until fortune is won 
 to be generous in small matters remains a miser to the 
 end of life. Generosity is a plant which does not grow in 
 a night. It needs cultivating, guiding and pruning. 
 Then its flowers are beautiful — its fruits precious. 
 
 No fabled fall of Adam 
 Can chain you to the sod ; 
 You are the child of glory, 
 The messenger of God. 
 
WHAT IS A GOOD 
 WOMAN ? 
 
What Is a Good Woman? 
 
 There are good women; there are better women; 
 there are best women. 
 
 There are comparatively good 'svomen, positively 
 good women, and superlatively good women ; and all 
 these definitions are modified by time, place, climate 
 and temperament. 
 
 No woman could be called good who walked down 
 Fifth avenue attired only in a loin cloth and a string of 
 beads; yet in Central Africa women walk abroad in 
 such an attire who are as good as they know how to 
 be — loyal wives, devoted mothers and dutiful 
 daughters. 
 
 Good women appear in public places and before 
 men here in America with uncovered faces and 
 shoulders; but in Turkey no good woman could do 
 this, because it is not the custom, and would offend. 
 
 The good woman does not offend purposely or 
 wantonly. She submits to the inconveniences and 
 discomforts of tradition until she can see some reason- 
 able prospect of bettering the race by defying the 
 conventions. 
 
 The comparatively good woman lives a harmless 
 life, avoids wounding any one, and submits to all 
 manner of injustice at the hands of society — because 
 she dislikes to make a fuss, or attract attention, or 
 disturb existing orders. 
 
 The positively good woman lives an actively good 
 life, under the same conditions, putting herself to 
 great trouble to help others, and to overcome the 
 
 107 
 
108 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 results of injustice without essaying to remove the 
 cause. 
 
 The superlatively good woman does all this and 
 more. She attends to the nearest duty first— relieves 
 distress and bestows sympathy; but she is brave 
 enough to attempt an attack on established traditions 
 when they stand in the way of the progress of the 
 human race, even though the attacks bring suffering 
 and pain upon herself. Mary Livermore, Julia Ward 
 Howe, Victoria Woodhull, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. 
 Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were all superla- 
 tively good women. Refined, sensitive and beautiful 
 souls, they suffered from the brutality and ignorance 
 of the world when they gave their lives to the destruc- 
 tion of moss-grown traditions which had become 
 breeders of pestilence, and undertook the construc- 
 tion of the great, broad edifice where woman dwells 
 today. 
 
 The merely good woman does no evil. She keeps 
 the Commandments, and is happy in being harmless. 
 
 The better woman does no evil and strives also 
 to do good v/here it comes in her way. 
 
 The best woman does no evil, does much good, 
 and goes out of her way to inspire and encourage 
 those who have been doing wrong to new aspirations 
 and endeavors. 
 
 The good woman never speaks ill of the absent. 
 She is silent when others condemn. 
 
 The better woman speaks well of the absent — 
 when it is possible to do so. 
 
 The best woman defends the absent, even at the 
 risk of offending those persons who are prone to 
 condemn. 
 
 The good woman is satisfied with being good. 
 
What Is a Good Woman? 109 
 
 The best woman is continually at work upon her 
 character to make it better. 
 
 The really good woman is a good daughter, sister, 
 wife, mother and friend. She may be simple, humble, 
 uneducated and poor, yet if she fulfils her duty in all 
 these relations she is the best of women, for they 
 invariably call forth the highest qualities of human 
 nature and often demand self-denial, self-sacrifice and 
 self-control. 
 
 Many women consider themselves *'good" because 
 they possess chastity. 
 
 Chastity is only one virtue. I have known chaste 
 viragos who would have made suitable consorts for 
 Beelzebub. 
 
 I have known chaste scandal -mongers who were 
 neighborhood assassins — slaying characters with their 
 adder tongues. 
 
 There are models of chastity and virtue who are 
 reckless spendthrifts, wasting hard-earned money in 
 needless ways. 
 
 The good woman knows how to curb her temper, 
 how to be charitable in speech, how to economize 
 her expenditures. 
 
 It requires courage, self-control and unselfishness 
 for a woman to practise common sense economy 
 when surrounded by extravagance and folly. In the 
 heart of fashionable society some such good w^omen 
 may be found. 
 
 It requires the same virtues and faith and trust in 
 God's wisdom added for a woman to be cheerful, kind 
 and patient while her heart is starved all her life for 
 the refinements and pleasures of existence; yet many 
 such women are to be found in homes of poverty — 
 good women who rejoice in the success and happiness 
 
110 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 of others, while fated to live a life of hard work and 
 loneliness from the cradle to the grave. In shops, 
 factories and kitchens, there are good women doing 
 distasteful work patiently, and cheerfully using their 
 earnings for others dependent upon them. 
 
 There are good women who stand by bad hus- 
 bands, because they believe it their duty, and because 
 they hope for ultimate reformation. 
 
 There are good women who leave bad husbands 
 because they realize that self-respect, or the salvation 
 of their children, demands it. 
 
 Any woman who lives up to her highest under- 
 standing of duty, is a good ^voman, no matter how 
 others may differ in their ideas of what constitutes 
 duty. 
 
 The girl who gives up her ambition for an educa- 
 tion in order to remain at home and care for aging 
 parents is a good girl; but another may prove a better 
 girl who pushes ahead and secures her education in 
 order that she can give her parents a more desirable 
 home eventually. 
 
 The highest unselfishness must sometimes suffer 
 from the misconstruction of the world, which regards 
 it as selfishness. 
 
 We are all a little better or a little worse than we 
 were last year this time; a little stronger or a little 
 weaker; a little wiser or a little duller. 
 
 There is no such thing as remaining stationary. 
 The world turns on its axis — the sun, stars, planets, all 
 revolve. Even the rocks are composed of millions of 
 ever-moving atoms. So the mind of the mortal is 
 always doing its work and making or unmaking the 
 character. 
 
 It is for you to decide as you analyze your own 
 
What Is a Good Woman? Ill 
 
 life whether you are a good woman or not; whether 
 you are as good as you know how to be ; and whether 
 you are better this vear than you were last. 
 
1 12 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Then let your secret thoughts be fair; 
 They have a vital part and share 
 In shaping worlds and molding fate, 
 God's system is so intricate. 
 
THE COLOR OF YOUR 
 THOUGHTS 
 
The Color of Your Thoughts 
 
 Do COLORS affect you? Are you conscious that 
 certain shades of color give you pleasurable and happy 
 sensations, and others irritate you, and others incline 
 you to despondency? 
 
 If so, do not consider it an evidence of incipient 
 insanity or blame yourself for being "queer." 
 
 Color plays a larger part in the every-day world 
 than most of us suspect. 
 
 Here is what a noted physician, a graduate of the 
 "old school," although he has gone forward into more 
 progressive ideas, told me. 
 
 We were talking of the marvelous results which 
 have been obtained by medical science from the 
 employment of violet and X-rays in curing supposedly 
 incurable diseases. 
 
 The physician showed me two plaster casts he had 
 removed from the legs of a small boy, who had worn 
 them for years, and who was pronounced incurable 
 by the leading specialists in such maladies; yet, after 
 some months of treatment under the violet and X-rays, 
 the plaster casts were removed, and the little boy is 
 rolling his hoop in the street, well and happy. 
 
 "We are discovering new wonders daily," the 
 doctor said. "In many hospitals now they are placing 
 red curtains about the beds of smallpox patients. It 
 has been proven that light falling through red curtains 
 prevents the pitting of the patient. There is a chemi- 
 cal property in red which produces this welcome 
 result. 
 
 115 
 
116 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 "Just so in violet; there are chemical properties 
 which aid in the cure of other maladies. 
 
 "Color is now a recognized factor in the progressive 
 medical world. And we are only in the morning of 
 our discoveries. The world will be astonished in ten 
 years' time at the revolution which will take place in 
 the science of medical therapeutics. Drugs are fast 
 becoming obsolete; the knife will be less popular, and 
 only in extreme cases, and in accidents, will it event- 
 ually be used by reputable surgeons. Liglit has come 
 to take the place of old, ignorant methods." 
 
 Then the physician took me into a private room, 
 where sat a young man of twenty-one years, for three 
 months a patient of the light cure. The mother of the 
 youth was present, and told me of the remarkable 
 effect violet and X-ray treatment had produced on 
 her son. 
 
 "For six years my boy had been growing steadily 
 worse with inflammatory rheumatism," she said. "For 
 one year before he came here he was confined to his 
 bed, unable to move without excruciating pain. The 
 best specialists in Greater New York assured me he 
 w^ould never leave his bed save for his tomb ; yet, in 
 three months' time he is able to walk on crutches, and 
 to sit up four hours a day." 
 
 Let there he light in the old medical school, since 
 such things as these are taking place about us. 
 
 Meantime, let us study color, and realize that it has 
 its place, aside from the decorative, in God's wonder- 
 ful scheme of a beautiful world. Every color indicates 
 a certain rate of vibration of light. It also represents 
 a certain sound vihration. Light, sound, color are all 
 related, then, and all affect the mental and physical 
 well-being of humans. 
 
The Color of Your Thoughts 117 
 
 Long ago the seers of the world said these things, 
 and it is gratifying to find physical science corroborat- 
 ing the statements of the ''wise men of old." 
 
 Thousands of years ago it was written and said 
 that each mortal had an "aura," and that by its color 
 the psychic eye could determine the thoughts of 
 another, whether sad or glad, gloomy or hopeful, angry 
 or loving. 
 
 In London a year or two ago a scientific corrobora- 
 tion of this theory was produced by a chemically pre- 
 pared screen, which brought out the colors surround- 
 ing the head of any one sitting in front of it, and, oddly 
 enough, the mental states of each person corresponded 
 with the colors the wise people thousands of years 
 ago had declared such thoughts would produce; the 
 brown ''aura" despondency, the pink, love. 
 
 Let us open the windows of our souls and minds 
 to all these glorious ne^v discoveries. They are com- 
 ing thick and fast in the next decade. 
 
 And by and by, after a century or two passes, all 
 mortals may develop the psychic eye and be enabled 
 to "see" the thoughts of one another. 
 
 Since many such people exist to-day all about us, 
 it behooves us to cultivate a "pink aura" by loving 
 thoughts, and to avoid anger and evil passions, which 
 display themselves in sullen red rays ; or despondency, 
 which clothes itself in muddy brown. 
 
 The pink aura, by all means ! 
 
1 18 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 I hold it true that thoughts are things 
 Endowed with bodies, breath and wings, 
 And that we send them forth to fill 
 The world with good results or ill. 
 
"IN GOD WE TRUST" 
 
"In God We Trust" 
 
 A CURIOUS thing is to be seen at the St. Frances 
 Hotel, San Francisco, Cal., that wonderful phoenix 
 hotel which has risen from its ashes, just as beautiful 
 and busy and optimistic as before the earthquake, and 
 now, as then, one of the best hotels in the world. 
 
 At the desk they show you a twenty dollar gold 
 piece which was found under burning bricks and in 
 the debris of the office after the work of clearing out 
 began. The face of Liberty is burned away; so are 
 the wings of the eagle, but clear and bright remain the 
 words: ''In God We Trust r 
 
 And surely nowhere in the whole world, and 
 never in the annals of history, can be found a greater 
 proof of a trust in the "Divinity Within" than has been 
 exhibited and is being exhibited by the people of 
 San Francisco. 
 
 It would be an excellent thing if the men and 
 women who have met with large or small losses in the 
 East during the recent money panics could visit the 
 Pacific Coast and realize what real loss — real disaster 
 — means. And see there, too, what real courage and 
 real trust means. 
 
 There are no melancholy faces in San Francisco. 
 
 There is no talk of hard luck and misfortune. 
 
 People tell you they lost everything they had, and 
 that they are beginning life all over again, but they 
 show you how wonderful has been their progress, 
 instead of giving you the details of how vast their 
 misfortunes. 
 
 121 
 
122 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Men who have been accustomed to warerooms 
 and offices occupying a block, are working cheerfully 
 in two small rooms, while planning to reach a position 
 to rebuild on the old large scale. 
 
 Women who have been accustomed to carriages 
 and servants and luxury are turning their accomplish- 
 ments into the means of earning a living; teaching 
 music; doing fine sewing, acting as companions or 
 clerks, and performing their duties with cheerfulness 
 and courage and thankfulness. 
 
 And it is that amazing and glorious spirit which 
 has already rebuilt the city to such an astonishing 
 degree, and will build it up to be a far greater and 
 more beautiful city than it has ever been in the past. 
 
 These same people who are showing this colossal 
 courage no doubt used to make themselves miserable 
 over trifles; over the loss of a small investment; over 
 the incompetence of domestics; and the failure of a 
 tailor to fit a coat or gown properly doubtless caused 
 them unhappiness for days "before the quake." 
 
 It sometimes seems that it is because so many of us 
 waste life and emotion over the trifling worries of 
 existence that the great calamities are sent now and 
 then to wake the nobility in human nature, the real 
 heroism which comes forth in times of universal 
 disaster. 
 
 What a great and glorious world this might be if 
 we always kept the attitude toward one another which 
 prevails in the hour of flood and fire and earthquake! 
 
 If we forgot the foolish distinctions of classes, and 
 just thought of one another as God's children, all push- 
 ing forward to safety, all hungry for peace, all seeking 
 shelter in the arms of Eternal Love ! 
 
 And if our hearts were always wide open to the 
 
"In God We Trust" 123 
 
 same emotions of sympathy and helpfulness that move 
 in us at some crucial hour ! 
 
 Oh, the pity of it, that we wait for some colossal 
 disaster to awaken in us the real spirit of universal 
 love! 
 
 But when you begin to feel blue about your losses, 
 and worried over your poor luck, stop a bit and think 
 what fate befell the people of San Francisco. Imagine 
 yourself stripped of every earthly possession, and 
 standing beside the ash heaps of a great city, and then 
 realize, if you can, what the motto on that half-burned 
 coin means — ''Iji God We Trust.'' 
 
 The omnipotence of the Creator of this universe, 
 who creates it over and over after each destruction, 
 lies in the soul of each man and woman. It lies in you. 
 
 If your life seems to be in ruins, if it is in ruins, 
 you can rebuild it with divine help, by acknowledging 
 and using the divine power you possess. Just as San 
 Francisco is being rebuilt, more splendid than before 
 the destruction, so can you rebuild your own life, for- 
 tune, health and happiness. 
 
 Press on! Achieve! Achieve! 
 
124 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 God ! what a world, if men in street and mart 
 Kept that same impulse of the human heart 
 That makes them, in the hour of fire and flood 
 Show the great meaning of True Brotherhood. 
 
ARE YOU ALIVE? 
 
Are You Alive? 
 
 Wandering over this big little world, and studying 
 the people in many lands, one must be impressed 
 with the vast preponderance of living dead creatures, 
 who cumber the earth with their bodies, and rob the 
 air of its oxygen, and disturb the silence with their 
 complaints. 
 
 People whose minds are dead to every thought 
 save the needs of the body; whose souls are asleep so 
 soundly that they are deaf to the call continually sound- 
 ing through space to each immortal spirit on every 
 sphere — the call come higher — and whose bodies are, 
 in consequence, sources of discomfort, pain, misery 
 and disease, or else of trivial worry. 
 
 With thoughts bound to the wheel of physical 
 anxieties, the days go around and around, and their 
 minds rise never beyond what to eat, what to wear, 
 what to do to find amusement, what to do to "get 
 even" with somebody for a fancied wrong, or to "get 
 ahead" of a rival; how to get well of this and that 
 ailment; what to take to obtain personal strength ; and, 
 for a slight variation of thought, how to make a fortune 
 in a hurry. 
 
 For mental recreation, they indulge in criticisms of 
 others who have erred, who have fallen by the way- 
 side, or who have risen too high upon the wave of 
 fortune. 
 
 There are thousands, and tens of thousands — yes, 
 millions — of such people on earth. 
 
 Are you one of these ? 
 
 127 
 
128 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 If you are, know you are that which you live in 
 dread of becoming, you are dead. The real you is 
 already, like John Brown's body, "moldering in the 
 grave" of your own digging. 
 
 But if you are willing to roll the stone of self away 
 and bid the Christ within you rise, you can hring 
 yourself to life. 
 
 You do not need any conversion by a churchman ; 
 you do not need to subscribe to any creed ; you do not 
 need any change of heart, save the getting rid of your 
 selfish, narrow, dull w^ay of looking at life. 
 
 All you need is to say to yourself: ''I am awaTce; I 
 am alive to every glorious truth in tliis wonderful 
 world; I am an immortal soul and tlicre is nothing 
 hut light, joy, health and power for me.'' \>^ 
 
 Then begin your morning with a resolve taf-.find 
 the beautiful and good things in the day, in tjie 
 weather, in the work you have to do, in the people 
 you meet. 
 
 If the weather greets you with bluster and wind 
 and rain and snow and fog, light it up with your own 
 spirit of sunshine. 
 
 I have "known people so radiant that they made 
 every one who approached them forget the weather. 
 
 If your work is distasteful, love it into shape, and 
 keep in your mind a desire for something better and 
 more congenial, and make yourself worthy of such 
 work when it comes your v/ay. No matter how 
 uncongenial your task is to-day, consider it a blessing 
 that you have employment, and push along to better 
 things. 
 
 Everything comes when we are fully ready. The 
 law never fails. You may believe yourself worthy of 
 better things than have fallen to your lot, but there is 
 
Are You Alive? 129 
 
 some reason, some cause in yourself, if you have not 
 what you desire. 
 
 If you encounter people who are disagreeable, he 
 so agreeable that you force them into a pleasant mood. 
 Bring out the best in everybody by giving them the 
 best that is in yourself. 
 
 It was "Madeline Bridges," that gifted poet who has 
 said so many beautiful things, who put this great truth 
 into simple words : 
 
 "Give to the world the best you have, 
 And the best shall come to you." 
 
 Just so sure as you live these lines, so sure shall be 
 your reward. But to do all this you must be alive. 
 
 Alive every hour of the day, and all of you; brain, 
 soul and body must be alive. Once you roll the stone 
 away and come forth, alive, you will vibrate at such a 
 rate that worry, disease, poverty, despondency, gloom 
 and melancholy will be unable to stay with you. 
 
 They can only attach themselves to atoms in a 
 slow and low rate of vibration — to minds that are 
 virtually dead. 
 
 There is no excuse for idleness, despondency and 
 despair in this world, so long as you are alive. 
 
 However hopeless the outlook may seem to you, 
 however difficult the path before you, you can find the 
 way to independence and success if you never let go. 
 
 It may require a long time. But if you had your 
 choice to-day — to stay in a dark, foggy valley and 
 slowly starve to death, or to climb a steep, long moun- 
 tain road which required years of endeavor and 
 fatigue, yet led to comfort and beauty at the top — you 
 would, I am sure, start at once up the mountain. 
 
130 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 No matter what boulders lay ahead, you would 
 try and climb over. No matter what wild animals 
 roamed over the mountain, you would face all the 
 trials and dangers sooner than stay in the valley and 
 die a slow death. 
 
 That is precisely what you want to do now. 
 
 To give up all individual effort because there are 
 trusts and monopolies in the land is to stay in the 
 valley and die of inaction. To push on in a deter- 
 mined and never-give-up state of mind, is to succeed 
 in spite of every tiling. 
 
 If you chance to see some other pilgrim on the 
 road, riding in an automobile while you walk, do not 
 at once jump to the conclusion that he is your enemy 
 and that he has robbed and cheated his fellow men 
 to procure his method of easy locomotion. 
 
 Such thoughts will take your force and vitality 
 away from the object you have in view, and will harm 
 you, while they may wrong your neighbor. It would 
 be well for you to find out how he came to own an 
 automobile before you condemn him as a greedy 
 monopolist. Perhaps he built it with his own skill 
 and labor, paying honest dollars for the materials. 
 
 I have known a fisherman to get along a lifetime 
 with a leaky boat and one oar, and to go about "scull- 
 ing," thinking it was the only way he could do; while 
 another fisherman, with no greater advantages, used his 
 spare hours in studying machinery, and built himself a 
 small launch, with which he explored deeper waters 
 and caught larger fish. This man was not a monopo- 
 list and owed no poorer neighbors an apology for 
 having better means of locomotion than they. 
 
 It has grown to be the habit of the unsuccessful 
 to class all people who possess comforts and conven- 
 
Are You Alive? 131 
 
 iences in one mass with the idle, selfish, and ofttimes 
 dishonest, rich. 
 
 There are millionaires who came by their wealth 
 through criminal methods. 
 
 There are capitalists who grind the poor and wrong 
 their fellow men. But it is well to remember that 
 there are also honest, noble, unselfish people with for- 
 tunes, and capitalists who are a blessing to the world, 
 to the laboring classes and to humanity. 
 
 No more unjust and absurd idea ever existed than 
 that mistaken impression of the very poor that all rich 
 or even comfortable people are their enemies and 
 their despoilers. 
 
 Equally erroneous is the idea that only the poor 
 have troubles, cares or hardships. 
 
 There are wealthy people who work fourteen 
 hours a day with their brains and hands, trying to do 
 good to humanity. 
 
 There are men who have become the possessors 
 of large fortunes through honest industry and per- 
 severance, and who are bowed to the earth by the 
 cares and responsibilities of life, and who lie awake 
 nights while poorer men sleep, trying to decide just 
 what is the kindest, wisest and most unselfish course 
 of action to pursue. 
 
 To be the possessor of a comfortable sum of money 
 does not mean to be dishonest or unkind, any more 
 than poverty means honesty and unselfishness. 
 
 There are all kinds of people in both classes. 
 
 However poor you are, try at least to be just and 
 fair in your estimate of others. 
 
 Justice is one of the pillars in character building. 
 
 Make yourself everything that is honest, noble, just 
 and deserving, as you climb the mountain of life, and 
 be careful before you condemn your fellow men. 
 
132 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Wake up! See the magnificent opportunities 
 which await the immortal being who is fully alive — 
 and press forward to the goal. 
 
 Each of us is heir to the attributes of 
 the Creator, and if we seek we find *'the 
 Kingdom of Heaven" within. 
 
SOMETHING ABOUT CELIBACY 
 
Something About Celibacy 
 
 We are told that Love goes where it is sent. 
 
 But the stubborn and wilful mind of the mortal 
 man or woman is ofttimes the sender. 
 
 It seems to be the nature of a certain order of 
 men and women to desire what is difScult and dan- 
 gerous to possess. 
 
 A woman, brought up in the Protestant religion, has 
 been thrown in close association with a Roman Cath- 
 olic priest, and she has become infatuated. She 
 imagines it to be the passion of a lifetime, and believes 
 her whole earthly existence is to be made unhappy 
 by this hopeless love. 
 
 She has tried separation and absence, but the love 
 still dominates her. **Is it right, is it natural, is it 
 necessary,'* she asks, ''for this man to give up all ties 
 of home, and wife, and children, to earn God*s 
 approval? 
 
 "Do you believe he is following God's will? 
 
 **Does God make human beings with natural emo- 
 tions and desires and affections, and then demand 
 that they crucify them ? 
 
 "Are they any better when they do crucify them? 
 
 "This priest is the most sunny natured and cheer- 
 ful man I have ever seen, but I cannot believe he is 
 really satisfied with his life. It seems so unnatural to me ! 
 
 "Do you think the vows of celibacy and poverty 
 necessary to the living of a religious life?" 
 
 In answer to these questions I can only voice my 
 personal beliefs upon this subject. I am neither a Roman 
 
 135 
 
136 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Catholic nor a Protestant. I believe in a Ruling Spirit 
 of Intelligence and Love, and in a succession of lives. 
 I believe in the immortality of all life, and in the 
 existence of innumerable realms about, above and 
 below us, where disembodied spirits dwell. And I 
 believe that each man should worship the Creator of 
 this universe in his own way and according to his own 
 ideals and convictions. 
 
 The Protestant clergyman who works among the 
 poor and helps to sustain the weak, and to uplift the 
 fallen, while he enjoys his home life and performs the 
 duties of a good husband and father, is serving God 
 in accordance with his ideals. 
 
 The Roman Catholic, or the Hindoo, or the Bud- 
 dhist priest who takes the voluntary vows of celibacy 
 and poverty and keeps them, devoting all his vital 
 powers to religious work and thoughts and aspirations, 
 is serving his Creator in Ms way, and whoever tries 
 to lead him from his resolutions is doing wrong. 
 
 This applies only to the priests who have volun- 
 tarily chosen this life; it does not apply to those 
 who have been driven into it by parents, or by tradi- 
 tions, and compelled to take up a course which is 
 distasteful to them or for which they are eminently 
 unfitted. 
 
 No man should become a priest unless from over- 
 whelming convictions and a dominating desire to 
 devote his whole life to spiritual things. 
 
 Judged from a human standpoint, the vows are 
 unnatural, and unless the divine nature of the man is 
 uppermost and his spiritual qualities are in excess of 
 his moral desires and ambitions, such vows are wrong. 
 
 No parent, no teacher, has the right to say to a 
 child, "You must become a priest," unless they are 
 
Something About Celibacy 137 
 
 confident the boy is born into life with the awakened 
 spirituality which will find its truest happiness and its 
 widest usefulness in such a career. 
 
 I have known priests who were absolutely happy 
 in their self-sacrifice, and who lived so in the spiritual 
 plane that the desires and ambitions of the ordinary 
 man did not reach them or appeal to them. 
 
 I recall a beautiful young priest of the Roman Cath- 
 olic persuasion who had taken his vows from choice, 
 and who gloried in his life of poverty and chastity; and 
 I recall the greatest soul it was ever my privilege to 
 encounter, a Yogi from India, who had overcome the 
 objections of his high caste family by his persistent 
 clamor for a religious life, and who regarded his vows 
 as the greatest privilege a mortal could enjoy. Human 
 love and worldly riches and honors held nothing for 
 himt he was always in a state of exaltation, always 
 enjoying a wealth which beggared the billionaires of 
 earth. 
 
 I heard foolish, sentimental and selfish women 
 sigh over his sacrifice of home ties and family, incapa- 
 ble of understanding the high altitude of the man. I 
 heard women say his life was unnatural. Yet to the 
 man it was the only natural life possible for him to 
 live. ■ He had outlived the domestic existence in past 
 incarnations. He was born into earth for a religious 
 post-graduate course, and he left his work and his 
 example behind him when he passed on. 
 
 But what folly for any parent to attempt to thrust 
 such a career upon a son! Priests, and Yogis, and 
 great religious masters are horUy not made to order. 
 The average human being needs the developing 
 experiences of mortal love, marriage and parenthood, 
 and they serve God's purposes through being good 
 husbands, and wives, and citizens. 
 
138 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 But because you and I find this life the natural one 
 we have no right to insist upon it for the priest, or the 
 Sister of Charity, who takes voluntary vows of celi- 
 bacy and poverty, and finds joy in keeping them. Nor 
 have we the right to try and tempt them to break their 
 resolutions. I do not believe it a sin for the man or 
 woman vv^ho has taken these vows without due under- 
 standing of all they implied, to abandon them. 
 
 I knew a young man who had been sent into 
 priesthood as deliberately as his brother was sent into 
 the army; he had nothing in his nature to make the 
 calling of a priest natural, or agreeable, or holy, and he 
 had everything to make him a devoted head of a family 
 and a good, shrewd business man. He fell in love and 
 married, and is doing the world a good service as a 
 kind husband and father and a charitable citizen to-day. 
 
 This is a thousand times better than if he were a 
 miserable, unhappy, discontented priest, carrying a 
 turbulent human heart filled with earthly desires under 
 his priestly robe. God has no punishment in store for 
 such a man, but He has penalties for those who live 
 false lives. 
 
 God will not be "angry" with the man who finds 
 he has made a mistake in his calling, but He will not 
 approve of the woman who goes about trying to con- 
 vince the happy and faithful priest who rejoices in his 
 life of devotion to spiritual things that he is on the 
 wrong track. 
 
 This is not a high calling for a Protestant woman. 
 
 Were she to analyze her state of mind, she would 
 find it was stubbornness and love of power, rather 
 than constancy, which direct her thoughts so continu- 
 ally toward this man of God. 
 
Something About Celibacy 139 
 
 We all may be 
 
 The Saviours of the world if we believe 
 
 In the Divinity which dwells in us 
 
 And worship it, and nail our grosser selves, 
 
 Our tempers, greeds, and our unworthy aims 
 
 Upon the cross. 
 
THE OLD AND THE NEW THOUGHT 
 VIEW OF LIFE 
 
The Old and the New Thought 
 View of Life 
 
 Once upon a time I read the following gloomy bit 
 of pessimism from the pen of a man bright enough to 
 know better than to add to the mental malaria of the 
 world. He said: 
 
 "Life is a hopeless battle in which we are fore- 
 doomed to defeat. And the prize for which we strive 
 *to have and to hold' — what is it? A thing that is 
 neither enjoyed while had nor missed when lost. So 
 worthless it is, so unsatisfying, so inadequate to pur- 
 pose, so false to hope, and at its best so brief, that for 
 consolation and compensation we set up fantastic 
 faiths of an aftertime in a better world from which no 
 confirming whisper has ever reached us out of the 
 void. Heaven is a prophecy uttered by the lips of 
 despair, but hell is an inference from history." 
 
 This is morbid and unwholesome talk which can 
 only harm the speaker and the listener. 
 
 It can depress and discourage the weak and strug- 
 gling souls who are striving to make the best of 
 circumstances, and it can nerve to suicide the hand of 
 some half-crazed being who needed only a word of 
 encouragement and cheer to brace up and win the 
 race. 
 
 This is the unpardonable sin — to talk discourag- 
 ingly to human souls hungering for hope. 
 
 When the man without brains does it, he can be 
 pardoned for knowing no better. 
 
 143 
 
144 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 When the man with brains does it, he should be 
 ashamed to look his fellow mortals in the eyes. 
 
 It is a sin ten times deeper dyed than giving a stone 
 to those who ask for bread. 
 
 It is giving poison to those who plead for a cup of 
 cold water. 
 
 Fortunately the remarks above quoted contain not 
 one atom of truth ! 
 
 The writer may speak for himself, but he has no 
 right to speak for others. 
 
 It is all very well for a man who is marked with 
 smallpox to say his face has not one unscarred inch 
 on the surface of it. But he has no premises to stand 
 upon when he says there is not a face in the world 
 which is free from smallpox scars. 
 
 Life is not "a hopeless battle in which we are 
 doomed to defeat." 
 
 Life is a glorious privilege, and we can make any- 
 thing we choose of it if we begin early, and are in 
 deep earnest, and realize our own divine powers. 
 
 Nothing can hinder us or stay us. We can do and 
 be whatsoever we will. 
 
 The prize of life is not "a thing which is neither 
 enjoyed while had nor missed when lost." 
 
 It is enjoyed by millions of souls today — this great 
 prize of life. . I for one declare that for every day of 
 misery in my existence I have had a week of joy and 
 happiness. For every hour of pain, I have had a day 
 of pleasure. For every moment of worry, an hour of 
 content. 
 
 I cannot be the only soul so endowed with the 
 appreciation of life. I know scores of happy people 
 who enjoy the many delights of earth, and there are 
 thousands whom I do not know. 
 
Old and New Thought View of Life 145 
 
 Of course, "life is not missed when lost!" — because 
 it is never lost. It is indestructible. 
 
 Life ever was, and ever will be. It is a continuous 
 performance. 
 
 It is not "worthless" to the wholsome, normal 
 mind. It is full of interest, and rich with opportunities 
 for usefulness. 
 / When any man says his life is worthless, it is be- 
 cause he has eyes and sees not, and ears and hears 
 not. 
 
 It is his own fault, not the fault of God, fate or 
 accident. 
 
 If every life seems at times "unsatisfactory" and 
 "inadequate" it is only due to the cry of the immortal 
 soul longing for larger opportunities and fewer limita- 
 tions. 
 
 Neither is life "false to hope." He who trusts the 
 divine Source of Life shall find his hopes more than 
 realized here upon earth. I but voice the knowledge 
 of thousands of souls when I make this assertion. I 
 know whereof I speak. 
 
 All that our dearest hopes desire will come to us if 
 ^ve believe in ourselves as rightful heirs to Divine 
 Opulence, and work and think always on those lines. 
 
 If "no whisper has ever reached us out of the 
 void" confirming our faith in immortality, then one- 
 third of the seemingly intelligent and sane beings of 
 our acquaintance must be fools or liars. For we have 
 the assertion of fully this number that such whispers 
 have come, besides the biblical statistics of numerous 
 messages from the other realm. 
 
 "As it was in the beginning, is now and ever more 
 shall be, world without end. Amen." 
 
 10 
 
146 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 I often think but for our veiled eyes 
 
 We should find heaven right round about us lies. 
 
THE CITIES BEYOND 
 
The Cities Beyond 
 
 There comes to me, from one in whom I believe, 
 a story of clear seeing — a vision of a wonderful city on 
 another plane, outside of the earth realm. 
 
 A city with beautiful streets, and fine architecture, 
 and fair statuary, and alive with action, peopled with 
 beings like, and yet unlike, the denizens of earth. 
 
 The friend who saw these things asks nothing of 
 me, not even belief; he is one who has studied the 
 psychic questions of the day for many years from a 
 purely critical and scientific standpoint; and he goes 
 about his daily avocations like any other practical and 
 sensible human being, and is not seeking for money 
 or glory or a following of devotees. He says little, 
 indeed, to any one of what he has been enabled 
 to learn of matters called supernormal or spiritual. 
 And only by an accident of similar tastes and interests 
 and aspirations, the information of his latest and most 
 interesting experience came to me. 
 
 Hundreds of my good friends will smile at my 
 credulity for believing this man's vision to be more 
 than the result of a disordered brain, or excited imagi- 
 nation. 
 
 Hundreds of the friends of Cyrus Field pitied those 
 few deluded people who believed in his vision of an 
 ocean cable. 
 
 Hundreds of the friends of Morse, and Franklin, 
 and Marconi, and Edison have been "sorry" for the 
 poor victims of "hallucinations," yet all these friends 
 
 149 
 
150 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 have lived to acknowledge their own mistakes of 
 judgment. 
 
 And so why may not all my doubting friends, if 
 they live long enough, be forced to acknowledge here 
 on earth their own lack of judgment in declaring the 
 reports of the 'advance guards" along the spiritual 
 picket line to be delusions ? 
 
 It is a curious phase of the mortal mind which 
 causes it to so vehemently oppose beliefs which are of 
 the utmost importance to human happiness and human 
 development. 
 
 There is no geographical fact — no possible dis- 
 covery of any other continent on earth — of such vast 
 import to humanity as the proof of realms beyond, or 
 outside of, this earth plane. 
 
 Should the discovery of a wonderful and fertile 
 continent at the North Pole be made, it could only 
 interest us for a limited period of time ; one hundred 
 years from now no one of us would remain to enjoy 
 its products or be entertained by its sights. 
 
 But the absolute knowledge and convincing proof 
 that other continents existed beyond the earth, and 
 the ability to see them with spiritual vision whenever 
 we so desired, would render time impotent and take 
 the sting, indeed, from death. 
 
 Personally, I do not imagine my friend saw 
 "heaven," for I do not believe in any one locality in 
 the further lands which bears that name. But I believe 
 "In my Father's house are many mansions," and in 
 my Father's universe are many continents and cities. 
 And I think my friend saw one of the many. I have 
 no doubt it was a spiritual city, inhabited by spiritual 
 beings, and that innumerable others exist in space — 
 cities beautiful and unbeautiful, on higher and lower 
 
The Cities Beyond 151 
 
 planes, according to the spiritual workmanship of the 
 inhabitants. 
 
 I believe you and I to-day, and every hour of the 
 day, are helping to build one of those cities; and just 
 as we build, so shall our structure be when we leave 
 this particular chemical formation in which our spirits 
 now dwell and pass on to new realms. And when 
 we reach that new region we shall find for neighbors 
 those who have thought similar thoughts, held similar 
 ambitions and committed similar actions while on 
 this sphere. The scientific world has decided that 
 "Thought is Energy." This energy will select our 
 place of habitation in the life beyond, and therefore 
 it behooves both you and me to direct our energy to 
 good and beautiful purposes, if we wish a desirable 
 location in one of the many "cities not built by hands," 
 but by ihouglits. 
 
 There is something wonderfully stimulating to the 
 human mind in the very vaguest dream of such a city. 
 
 It gives new impetus to worthy action, new wings 
 to hope, new^ comfort to sorrow, new solace to dis- 
 appointment and failure. It makes everything good 
 seem enduring, and everything that is not good trivial 
 and of small import. It makes the hurried transit of 
 time in this little life seem of less importance, and 
 arouses the heart from sad reveries over broken 
 earthly ties to a consciousness of renewed friendships 
 and affections in worlds beyond. 
 
 For those who have always longed for the beautiful 
 and ideal, while compelled to live in sordid and com- 
 monplace surroundings, it gives the exquisite hope of 
 compensation for disappointment and reward for 
 patience. 
 
 All hail to the Cities Beyond ! 
 
152 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 May our eyes receive the inner vision to behold 
 them while we are yet in the temporal body upon 
 this plane. 
 
 And a new name shall Science henceforth wear, 
 The Great Religion of the Universe. 
 
THE ONWARD MARCH 
 
The Onward March 
 
 When the sentimentalists talk of the vulgarity of 
 this mechanical age, and bemoan the increase of 
 machine work, they do not realize that they are be- 
 moaning the eventual evolution of man to something 
 greater and more godlike than his present state. 
 
 When the workingman sets his face against the 
 introduction of a labor-saving machine he does not 
 know it, but he is setting his face against the better- 
 ment of the lives of his children or his grandchildren. 
 
 When the stage coach, with its regular mails, was 
 first introduced into the country the men who had 
 carried mails on horseback across country declared 
 the stage a monster which took bread from poor men's 
 mouths. After the railroad came the stage coach 
 devotee made the same protest; and the steamship 
 was anathematized by the sailboat, and the trolley by 
 the railroad; gas was considered the destruction of 
 the lamp industry, and electric light was an invention 
 of the devil to the gas company. 
 
 Yet each new invention made new industries for 
 labor and created new occupations and new interests 
 for humanity. 
 
 The sewing machine brought consternation to the 
 seamstresses and tailors; and the mower was regarded 
 as an enemy of the poor man who had supported him- 
 self by wielding the scythe at haying and harvesting 
 seasons. 
 
 Yet what one of us to-day would like to see this 
 country dependent upon a mounted man riding across 
 
 155 
 
156 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 fields with the mail bag, or upon the fish oil lamp for 
 light, or the sailboat and stage coach for transportation, 
 or the scythe for garnering the harvests, or upon the 
 needle for all work in fashionable garments ? 
 
 Every machine means emancipation for the mind 
 of man. 
 
 I have not been stirred by anything in the world 
 of art more powerfully than I was stirred by the first 
 sight of the steam sweeper. What freedom for woman 
 lies in that invention once it becomes universal, as 
 it will! 
 
 Woman is slow to avail herself of the benefits of 
 man's inventive genius. She is inclined to drag along 
 in the old grooves, saying the old-fashioned methods 
 are good enough for her; but she is in the path of 
 progress, and she is too sensible to be ground under 
 its wheels. The day will come when all sweeping, 
 washing, ironing, dish cleansing and other menial labor 
 will be accomplished by the mere direction of a 
 machine, and the beautiful hours of beautiful days 
 will not be spent in back-breaking and mind-monop- 
 olizing rounds of ever- recurring labor. 
 
 If any man ever went to the almshouse because of 
 the advent of machinery, it was owing to his own lack 
 of foresight and perseverance. 
 
 Temporarily, indeed, the individual may suffer 
 from loss of his accustomed occupation; but if he 
 keeps his mind alert and his eye open and his heart 
 courageous, he will find new paths leading from the 
 new inventions which offer ten -fold the opportunities 
 for success offered by the old. 
 
 The railroad will serve as an example. 
 
 Where a score of men in a locality were driven 
 out of business by the abandonment of the stage 
 
The Onward March 157 
 
 coach, hundreds of men found occupation as con- 
 ductors, engineers, porters, brakemen and switchmen, 
 not to mention the more profitable positions as officers 
 of the road. 
 
 From the building and marketing of sewing ma- 
 chines and mowers and reapers, more families have 
 derived support, than were driven from business by 
 their introduction. 
 
 The world will not, cannot, must not, stand still 
 because a few slow and satisfied people have fallen 
 into a groove and are dazed at the thought of essaying 
 any other method of life. 
 
 Progress is like a mighty engine, and those wh*^ 
 are standing in its way must be struck down. 
 
 Safety can only be found in getting out of the way. 
 
 The man who attempted to start a large enterprise 
 in the manufacture of sperm oil lamps after the arrival 
 of gas as a means of illumination need not blame the 
 gas company for his failure. 
 
 It was due to his own lack of perception. 
 
 The manufacture of gas fixtures would have brought 
 him a fortune. 
 
 Always look for the opportunity lying in the wake 
 of progress; do not undertake anything which means 
 defiance to new inventions. 
 
 Do not imagine you can persuade the masses to 
 stay behind with old fashions and old methods. 
 
 However you may approve them, however they 
 may excel the new ideas in many respects, you will 
 be wise to save your breath, vitality and time for more 
 profitable undertakings. 
 
 Man is rapidly paving the way for a wonderful 
 era of mental and spiritual development. 
 
 The work of the world is becoming systematized, 
 
158 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 and machinery is relieving overtaxed minds and bodies 
 of the laboring world. 
 
 Science and invention are working hand in hand, 
 and before the end of this century discoveries will be 
 made which to-day would rank with miracles. Man is 
 only beginning to suspect that he has a soul, independ- 
 ent of his body. In a very short period of time all 
 intelligent beings will know the truth, understood only 
 by the awakened few to-day. 
 
 Keep your mind receptive, that you may inherit 
 the kingdom which awaits you. 
 
 Lift up your eyes! 
 
 Not like a daring, bold, aggressive boy 
 
 Is inspiration, eager to pursue; 
 But rather like a maiden, fond, yet coy, 
 
 Who gives herself to him who best doth woo. 
 
COMMON SENSE IDEAS 
 IN MARRIAGE 
 
Common Sense Ideas in Marriage 
 
 Happiness in married life is to be gained just as 
 enduring happiness in any phase of existence on earth 
 is to be found — by the use of the old-fashioned virtues 
 of unselfishness, consideration for others, politeness 
 and kindness, all based on love and capped by 
 common sense. 
 
 Like the old recipe for cooking the hare, which 
 begins, "First catch your hare," a happy marriage 
 for a wom.an begins with, "First select a man!' — not an 
 ideal-made seraph, not an ossified brain, not a mere 
 animal, but a man capable of loving and appreciating 
 a woman's love. 
 
 Of course he will be more or less selfish. That is 
 the way parents rear their sons to be. It is your 
 task to bear with this selfishness at first, until you 
 can tactfully teach him how beautiful is thoughtfulness 
 for others, and in a very sweet but very dignified way, 
 show him that you expect the same treatment you 
 give. 
 
 In the meantime you must recollect that you are a 
 faulty woman — and probably spoiled by your parents 
 if you are an American woman — and you must not 
 assume a superior air over your husband when you 
 find out his faults, merely because they are unlike 
 your own. 
 
 Whenever he does or says anything ^vhich annoys 
 or pains you, say to yourself: "I must avoid ever say- 
 ing or doing that in my treatment of him." 
 
 Then some day, when he tells vou of a fault you 
 11 161 
 
162 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 possess, put your arm about his shoulder and say: "Let 
 us enter into a Mutual Improvement Society. I want 
 to be everything you admire — you want to be every- 
 thing I admire. 
 
 "I will try and do my part and you must do yours. 
 We are business associates for life, in God's Great 
 Syndicate of Love — let us work together for a 
 perfectly happy marriage." 
 
 If your husband has whims, harmless whims, such 
 as wanting his meals at certain hours promptly, or 
 wanting you to be ready on time when you are going 
 out, make every effort to gratify him. 
 
 Be willing to sacrifice yourself to some extent to do 
 this, but if you do as he wishes eight times without 
 any word of approval from him and fail twice, and he 
 is irritable in consequence, remind him gently of his 
 lack of reasonableness and tell him that you need en- 
 couragement for your good deeds as well as reproofs 
 for your shortcomings. Then persist in your efforts 
 to please him. 
 
 Believe in your husband and expect him to be 
 everything your heart desires. Say to yourself every 
 day that he loves you; that he is good, loyal, kind, 
 worthy and successful. Praise him; sympathize with 
 his business life, his aims, pleasures and occupations. 
 
 Be his friend and comrade as well as his sweet- 
 heart and home-keeper. Remember that a woman 
 makes the atmosphere of the home. 
 
 I have seen a cheerful, optimistic woman, who saw 
 a humorous side to every trouble in life, utterly trans- 
 form a gloomy and fretful natured man into a jolly and 
 good-humored being. 
 
 If a man is certain he will find cheer, peace, 
 mirthfulness, order, sympathy and love at home, he is 
 
Common Sense Ideas in Marriage 163 
 
 certain to set his sail for that port with the same 
 anticipation with which the mariner seeks his own 
 harbor after a stormy voyage. 
 
 Of course we must make allowances for the occa- 
 sional lawless and drunken mariner who sends his 
 ship on the rocks, and the worthless husband who 
 does not appreciate life's best gifts. 
 
 There are men who no woman on God's earth 
 could keep loyal or honest, but they are exceptions. 
 
 Be clean, neat and coquettish in your dress at home 
 and in the privacy of your rooms with your husband. 
 
 Never let him see you in soiled or careless gar- 
 ments, and let him realize, tactfully, that you expect 
 the same refinements from him. Nothing is common- 
 place in the daily associations of life to two beings 
 who love each other, if they do not allow themselves 
 to fall into vulgarities. 
 
 Mystery, romance and charm can hang forever 
 about the wife, as well as about the mistress, if the 
 wife so chooses. The husband can always, at every 
 approach, be the Prince Charming to anchor the en- 
 chanted Princess with his first kiss, if he is skilled 
 enough in love's arts and refined enough to wish to 
 keep the interesting role. 
 
 And in all love's ways man is much given to fol- 
 lowing woman's lead. 
 
 If you possess no independent income of your 
 own, have an understanding during your honeymoon 
 in regard to money matters. 
 
 Ask for an allowance to be set apart for your use, 
 in order that no humiliating and indelicate discussions 
 need ever occur between you on this subject. Then 
 study to be economical and thrifty and wise in your 
 use of your allowance. 
 
164 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Love, sense and patience. Those are the three 
 important elements necessary to happiness in marriage. 
 
 Much has been said and written of the woman 
 who keeps her little worries and troubles of the kitchen 
 and nursery to entertain her husband with when he 
 returns home after business hours. 
 
 She has been chided and urged to remember how 
 much her husband needs her cheerful face to greet 
 him at home and her bright, hopeful conversation to 
 drive away the load of cares which beset his weary 
 mind. 
 
 All this is very true. There are always women 
 who forget that man's business life is not one per- 
 petual fete, and that his hom^e is frequently the only 
 place to which he can turn for real rest and peace of 
 mind. 
 
 But observation impresses upon my mind the con- 
 viction that very few business men leave their office 
 and shop worries and anxieties behind them when 
 they enter the domestic door and eventide. 
 
 They carry them into the home and expect the 
 wife to be entertained with them. If she endeavors 
 to change the subject they feel that she is not interested 
 in their affairs, and that she is heartless and indifferent. 
 
 If they do not talk their worries at home, they 
 act them, which is quite as bad, if not worse. 
 
 I have seen a happy, optimistic, loving woman's 
 face, beaming with pleasure at the sound of her hus- 
 band's latchkey in the door, changed to sadness and 
 depression in half an hour by the gloom and nervous- 
 ness of a really kind-hearted man, who had not the 
 forethought or self-control to throw^ his business 
 troubles off before entering his home. 
 
 Even if a man is so tired and worn by a swarm of 
 
Common Sense Ideas in Marriage 165 
 
 petty and harrowing troubles, or by giant burdens, that 
 he cannot at once lift himself into a state of cheerful- 
 ness or serenity he might at least make some effort to 
 avoid spoiling a loving woman's whole evening by his 
 preoccupation and depression. 
 
 It is, of course, a duty and a pleasure for a sympa- 
 thetic wife to soothe and cheer and distract a man's 
 mind from care; but it is equally a thoughtful man's 
 duty to save a wife all the unnecessary worry possible. 
 
 Nothing v/eakens a character sooner than the habit 
 of taking all its troubles to another life to bear vicari- 
 ously and ignoring its own duty for self-reliance, 
 cheerfulness and courage. 
 
 The coming home of the beloved man is the event 
 of the day for the loving woman, no matter how full 
 her life may be of agreeable duties or social pleasures. 
 If four or five days out of the six week-days he comes 
 home with the **blues" just so many days are spoiled 
 for her. 
 
 If she is continually called upon to stimulate and 
 sympathize and cheer, the drain upon her vital and 
 spiritual forces becomes exhausting, and the character 
 of the man grows surely, if unconsciously, weaker by 
 the process. 
 
 A wife creates the atmosphere of the home— but 
 the husband must do his part as well if sunshine is to 
 prevail there. Its rays will be dimmed if he persists 
 in transforming himself into a large black cloud, or a 
 bank of fog. It is a relief, now and then, for a wife to 
 tell her husband all the vexations of the day and to 
 have his sympathetic counsel; and just so, on occa- 
 sions, it is a comfort for a man to take his troubles 
 home to a loving mate and talk them over. But it is 
 a great mistake when either one settles into the habit 
 
166 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 of loading the other s shoulders with a burden of 
 worries, described or unexpressed. 
 
 And I fear in these days this grave error is made 
 more frequently by the husband than by the wife. 
 
 Many a time the head of the household imagines 
 he is doing all his duty by working incessantly and 
 keeping his family in comfort or luxury. 
 
 If he exhausts all of his hope and cheerfulness in 
 his labor and has nothing to take home to his family 
 but his depression and nervousness, he is doing his 
 wife and children a greater injury than he would if he 
 worked less and provided them with fewer material 
 benefits. 
 
 A home needs something besides receipted bills to 
 render it a happy haven for a family. 
 
 Lean on thyself, yet prop thyself with Prayer; 
 For there are spirits, Messengers of Light, 
 Who come at call and fortify thy strength. 
 
THE SHADING OF THE 
 PICTURE 
 
The Shading of the Picture 
 
 Elbert Hubbard quotes and reiterates the saying 
 of John Wesley that he never had a mood of despond- 
 ency which lasted more than a half hour in all his life. 
 
 While I am an advocate of optimism as the founda- 
 tion of happiness, success, health and usefulness, yet 
 I believe there is great spiritual growth found at times 
 in a season of despondency and self- analysis. 
 
 It is in such hours that we take mental stock, that 
 we view ourselves under the searchlight, and that we 
 discover how closely we resemble the "other people," 
 those ''others" who have been the subject of our criti- 
 cisms and our aversions, perhaps. It is when we feel 
 "blue" that we understand many racial weaknesses 
 and faults, and we come closer to all erring and suffer- 
 ing humanity. As the skies are more beautiful some- 
 times seen through a rainbow, so humanity is more 
 beautiful seen through our tears. 
 
 It would have been better for the world had John 
 Wesley indulged in a few moods of such enlightening 
 despondency. One such season might have taught 
 him the inconsistency of his belief in hellfire and brim- 
 stone as godly means of punishment. He would have 
 realized how wholly self-made is each hell. 
 
 The man who remains alway and forever satisfied 
 and cheerful, is dangerously near becoming an egotist. 
 
 He is so certain that he is all right that he is sure 
 everybody else is all wrong. 
 
 It requires a touch of shadow to make a perfect 
 picture. 
 
 169 
 
170 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 He who has never known hunger has never known 
 real enjoyment in a repast. 
 
 The deepest harmonies in music must unite the 
 minor with the major chords. 
 
 The earth must suffer by storm and frost before it 
 can produce its fullest harvest. 
 
 I do not believe it is possible for a human being to 
 attain the very best of which he is capable without 
 seasons of gloom, despondency and almost despair. 
 
 It is in such seasons that we reach up, beyond our 
 lesser selves, and find God. 
 
 And it is in such seasons that we realize our 
 kinship to all who have struggled and toiled and 
 overcome. 
 
 The man born rich, who never knows the strain 
 and pain of poverty, cannot sympathize with millions 
 of his fellow men who lie awake at night, anxious 
 hearted and sleepless eyed, because of unsupplied 
 material needs. 
 
 The man who has never known despondency 
 cannot get into the inmost heart of his despondent 
 brother and help him to rise above his fears and 
 worries, showing him the way by which he himself 
 has climbed. 
 
 Therefore I say to you, be not discouraged with 
 your mental state, even if, unlike the two illustrious 
 men named above, you sometimes fall into the deep 
 valleys of shadow, and walk in gloom for a season, 
 and see no path leading higher. 
 
 You are but gathering strength for a fuller under- 
 standing of life, a fuller and richer comprehension of 
 your kind, and you will surely, surely, if you w^atch 
 and wait, and try, find the path that leads out again, 
 up the mountain side. And when you see the sun of 
 
The Shading of the Picture 171 
 
 hope once more it will shine with greater lustre, and 
 your eyes will have wider vision because of your 
 sojourn in the valley. 
 
 God's lessons for us mortals are not all written in 
 illuminated texts — many of the letters are shaded and 
 dark. 
 
 Believe always that each lesson is from God, and 
 walk on into the sunlight. It shines over the hill 
 farther on. 
 
 There is no sin in an occasional descent into the 
 valley of despair — the sin is in remaining there, and 
 shutting the eyes to the heights. 
 
 All men are unawakened gods. 
 
WOMAN AND THE 
 CIGARETTE 
 
Woman and the Cigarette 
 
 The growing tendency of woman to smoke must 
 be regarded as a misfortune to the race by all who 
 think deeper than the surface of things. 
 
 It is useless to say that the vice is no more injurious 
 to woman than to man. The subject does not end 
 there. Until nature provides some other way for the 
 race to obtain birth than its present method, the habits 
 and thoughts of woman are of greater importance to 
 the world than those of men. 
 
 Every child comes into the world strongly im- 
 pressed by the prenatal condition surrounding the 
 mother. 
 
 Science has proven that the poorly nourished and 
 ill-fed mother produces an anemic and weakly child, 
 and that drinking mothers produce diseased or 
 abnormal children. In countries where great poverty 
 exists, and where women are the burden bearers, the 
 race is almost always undersized. 
 
 The accumulation of proofs that the thoughts of the 
 mother affect the child before birth is overwhelming. 
 
 Physically and psychically the mother's part in 
 making her child what it proves to be is so great that 
 it borders close upon omnipotence. Napoleon's 
 mother read histories of war and was fired with the 
 conquests of great warriors before his birth. A 
 woman of my acquaintance has an abnormal appetite 
 for fruit because before her birth her mother was liv- 
 ing on a ranch where fruit was not to be obtained. 
 
 The suppressed desires, tendencies and appetites 
 
 175 
 
176 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 are more frequently given to the children than those 
 which are indulged and gratified. Therefore it is 
 most important that a woman who ever hopes to 
 become a mother should not create a habit, appetite 
 or taste which, by its indulgence, will harm her child 
 physically, or, by its suppression, will harm it men- 
 tally. 
 
 The woman who fills her system with nicotine 
 while carrying a child under her heart could not 
 expect to give that child a good constitution. 
 
 The woman who craved cigarettes continually, 
 and resisted, would give the child that craving. 
 
 Hundreds of young girls think a surreptitious cig- 
 arette is "great fun." 
 
 If it ends at that, as it does in the majority of cases, 
 no harm is done. It does not pay in this world to be 
 too strait-laced, or, as a bright woman expressed it, "to 
 be always tightly buttoned up." But it does pay to so 
 control our habits, appetites and customs that ive are 
 masters, and that our minds and bodies are kept clean, 
 wholesome and well poised; and to so live that our 
 children will receive only the best influence for their 
 earthly portion of the incarnation to which we call 
 them. 
 
 Upon the condition of the mind of the mother 
 depends greatly the kind of spiritual ego she calls 
 ^rom space for re-birth. To that ego are added the 
 physical inheritance from the parents and ancestors 
 and the prenatal influences of the mother. 
 
 Every new-born child is, therefore, a wonderfully 
 composite creature, but the mother who understands 
 the law of prenatal influence, and adds to it a knowl- 
 edge of what can be done by the right training of the 
 human plant, as Luther Burbank expresses it in his 
 
Women and the Cigarette 177 
 
 wonderful book, can make her child into what she 
 wishes it to be. 
 
 It is a remarkable fact that the present growth of 
 the cigarette habit among women is largely due to 
 men. I know at least a score of men who have 
 taught their wives to smoke. They declare it is 
 "sociable" and makes the woman more "companion- 
 able." 
 
 Yet several of these men have been deeply con- 
 cerned when the habit grew upon their wives. 
 
 A gifted and beautiful young wife of my acquaint- 
 ance smokes so incessantly that she is obliged to take 
 a "rest cure" in some sanitarium once or twice a year. 
 
 Then, after clearing her system of nicotine, she 
 begins to fill it again. And never once does she admit 
 to herself that the cigarette habit is the cause of her 
 nervous breakdown. She always thinks it is due to 
 her "artistic temperament" and over brain work. 
 
 It is to be regretted that women who occupy 
 prominent positions in the world of society or of art 
 do not feel the "noblesse oblige" which prevents a 
 woman from placing her personal sanction on a habit 
 which is an injury to the sex at large and to coming 
 generations. 
 
 12 
 
178 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Who giveth love to all, 
 
 Pays kindness for unkindness, smiles for frowns, 
 And lends new courage to each fainting heart, 
 And strengthens hope and scatters joy abroad. 
 He, too, is a Redeemer, Son of God. 
 
SINNING AGAINST THE 
 "HOLY GHOST" 
 
Sinning Against the **Holy Ghost" 
 
 Never since the beginning of history was there 
 such a spiritual awakening in the minds of men as has 
 taken place in the last few years. It is not a sudden 
 emotional phase, but a growing flame of desire for 
 greater knowledge and for freedom of thought. It 
 affects all classes, and is to some degree felt and 
 understood by the most ignorant as well as by the 
 most frivolous. 
 
 While it is certain to bring humanity to a higher 
 standard eventually, it is causing many abnormal 
 phases to display themselves in the meantime. Most 
 abnormal of all is the phase which strikes at the root 
 of domestic life and destroys conjugal happiness in the 
 name of religion. 
 
 There is a growing class of women who believe 
 they have been ''awakened" spiritually, and who are 
 convinced by their "Teachers" first, and through their 
 own "Higher Convictions" afterward, that love should 
 exist only on the spiritual plane, and that men and 
 women should live and love as disembodied spirits 
 are supposed to live and love. 
 
 From reliable sources the astonishing and almost 
 incredible information has come that an order of 
 ''religious'' enthusiasts exists which recommends the 
 mutilation of the body as a means of spiritualizing the 
 mind. This is not among savage or ignorant people 
 but among the educated and refined women of the 
 /and, mind you. 
 
 Could there be a more insulting act shown the 
 
 181 
 
182 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Creator? Could there be a more utter abandonment 
 of the divine power, and willy and self control, which 
 are the God qualities given us to use in the develop- 
 ment of character? 
 
 These same religious devotees will tell you that 
 the Hindoo who holds his arm in one position until it 
 becomes paralyzed, to show his love of God, or that 
 the Lhassa priest who disembowels himself alive for 
 the same purpose is a pagan and a savage. Yet com- 
 mon sense tells us that all abnormal and unnatural 
 methods of life followed in tlie name of religion are 
 of the same school, and that school belongs in the 
 realm of unbalanced minds. God does not want and 
 does not approve of any method of life which 
 upsets His divinely planned order of human exist- 
 ence. 
 
 It is just as great a crime to starve, torture and 
 mutilate your own body as that of another. Every 
 organ, impulse, appetite, affection and passion was 
 given you to conserve for the highest purpose. Just as 
 vour hands need the ten fingers, and your feet the 
 ten toes, and your face two eyes, and ears, and a nose, 
 and mouth, to be a perfect human body, so you need 
 all your emotions and appetites and desires to be a 
 perfect being. Just as you need to use the organs of 
 your body for noble purposes, and your hands for 
 worthy service, and your feet for willing journeys at 
 the bidding of good, so you need to turn all your 
 impulses to the development of a perfect character. 
 
 The craze for fasting has become a disease in 
 America among many orders of religious fanatics. 
 Without doubt an occasional fast of a day is excellent 
 for the overtaxed digestion, as a day of rest is excellent 
 for the overworked man or beast. Occasionally 
 
Sinning Against the "Holy Ghost" 183 
 
 seasons of living upon milk and raw foods are good 
 for the body and mind. But long agonizing fasts, and 
 the idea that we must exist like the air plants on our 
 respirations and aspirations, and never eat anything 
 which we like, in order to become "spiritual" — that is 
 a phase of emotional insanity. 
 
 The wife who loves her husband and who knows 
 that he is her loyal lover and friend, yet who is carried 
 away by her religious mania to the extent of believing 
 that she must live only in the realm of the spirit with 
 him — she, too, has become insane and needs a special- 
 ist to look after her condition. She is sinning against 
 God, who made men and women to be not only 
 spiritual and mental, but physical mates. 
 
 We have no right to attempt to overturn God's 
 kingdom on earth and to starve and mutilate and 
 crucify ourselves, to establish any order of life which 
 is unnatural and premature. 
 
 Live t?ie hest and highest order of this life before 
 you attempt another. Be the best wife, the best 
 mother, the best friend, the best woman possible 
 before you try to become the best saint or angel. 
 
 To be the best wife to the good self-controlled 
 husband who respects your womanhood, you need to 
 be human as God intended you to be when he made 
 human beings. He made the trees, the plants, the 
 animals and the human family all with various 
 impulses, and had He not respected these impulses 
 enough to make them universal they would not 
 exist. 
 
 To starve or destroy, by unnatural methods, any 
 part of the nature is as wicked as to abuse and misuse 
 it. You have no right to brand as base or ignoble 
 what God created. 
 
184 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 To be the best Mother, Friend and Woman possi- 
 ble, sympathy and charity and understanding of the 
 everyday life of your kind must be cultivated. You 
 must be human and wholesome and natural and 
 loving. You must not attempt to stand upon a pedes- 
 tal and pose for the admiration of those belo\\^ you. 
 Instead of trying to call people up to a chilly height, 
 you must go along with them, and if you stumble and 
 fall now and then, show them how quickly a human 
 being can rise and brush off the dust and go on higher. 
 This will do the world tenfold more good than all 
 your fastings and soarings and all the crucifyings of 
 your normal nature. 
 
 When God is ready to take you out of the body 
 it will then be time for you to practise wholly spiritual 
 methods of life. 
 
 While He indicates His desire that you remain in 
 the body, live like a good, sensible human being and 
 make every one about you happy and comfortable. 
 Of course humanity needs high ideals to lead it away 
 from self-indulgence. 
 
 But it is a poor way to try and cure a man of gour- 
 mandizing by starving him to death. The wiser way 
 is to make him understand the delight of self-control, 
 and the purpose for which the appetite was bestowed 
 by the Creator. To remove his digestive organs and 
 sustain his life by hypodermic injections of food 
 might relieve him of hunger's pangs, but it would not 
 develop his character like helping him to conserve his 
 appetite for the sustaining of life and the normal pleas- 
 ures of the table. Every time we control an abnormal 
 or unwise appetite of any kind we grow in mental and 
 spiritual power and in the development of character. 
 But that does not mean that we are to deny the body 
 
Sinning Against the "Holy Ghost" 185 
 
 food upon all occasions or starve the nature at every 
 turn. 
 
 To ruin your home life by trying to prove yourself 
 a spirit is a sin against God, yourself and humanity. 
 
 Faith cannot rescue and no blood redeem 
 The soul that will not reason and resolve. 
 
NEW THOUGHTS AND 
 BEAUTY 
 
New Thoughts and Beauty 
 
 Mr. Marcel Prevost once said that beauty no 
 longer rules the world. Women of brains now take 
 the scepter, he claimed. 
 
 It is possible that Mr. Prevost was merely a little 
 belated in his discovery. 
 
 Some of the greatest women the world has ever 
 known — women who have helped to make history 
 and to change the atlas of the earth — were women of 
 greater brains than beauty. 
 
 Cleopatra was not beautiful, according to the artist's 
 ideal. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that 
 she lacked size, symmetry and youth, when she 
 wielded her most powerful sway over men and 
 nations. 
 
 Nobody knows how Helen of Troy looked, but 
 the statement has been made by learned men that she 
 was past forty when she turned the world into a 
 theater where a continuous performance of battle took 
 place on her account. 
 
 Aspasia was more famed for her talents than for 
 her physical attractions, though she was a beautiful 
 woman. She was said to have written part of 
 Pericles's famous funeral oration and was accused 
 of bringing on a war with Samos. Her house was 
 the center of literary and philosophical circles in 
 Athens. 
 
 Catharine of Russia is remembered for her marvel- 
 ous achievements — as a statesman, warrior and friend 
 to art and literature and for her many lovers. So 
 
 189 
 
190 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 masculine a nature as hers could not have dwelt in a 
 femininely beautiful body. 
 
 The great beauties who have ruled their worlds to 
 any important extent have always coupled brains and 
 tact with their physical charms. 
 
 Ninon de L'Enclos was exceptionally gifted men- 
 tally, and so was Madame Recamier. Neither woman 
 could have exerted so vast and permanent an influence 
 by beauty alone. 
 
 Very many of their subjects who imagined they 
 worshiped at beauty's shrine were undoubtedly held 
 in bondage by other qualities. 
 
 Without question, the world respects and admires 
 intellect in women more to-day than in former eras. 
 
 There was a time — the time of Aspasia and her 
 contemporaries — when a woman was obliged to rank 
 herself among the declasse, if she wished for a general 
 education. 
 
 To think outside of domestic and sentimental sub- 
 jects was supposed to unsex her. A woman was 
 forced to defy conventionalities and forego domesticity, 
 if she insisted upon being intellectual. 
 
 The progress of the world has changed all that. 
 
 Woman is allowed to do as she pleases in the 
 mental realm, and her achievements are applauded 
 and respected. The intelligent girl puts the ignorant 
 beauty to confusion. 
 
 But the really wise, as well as brainy woman, 
 knows the value of beauty, and cultivates it. 
 
 Beauty is, after all, a matter of individual opinion. 
 
 There is no standard by which it can be decided 
 to please everybody. 
 
 The most exquisite brunette of personal attractions 
 will be found lacking in charm by somebody who 
 
New Thoughts and Beauty 191 
 
 adores blondes and vice versa. The tall Diana will 
 be criticised by the lover of the "pocket Venus." Let 
 either woman, however, add mental charm and 
 tact (of all things, tact, which is the result of kindness 
 and breeding), and she may have the world at her feet. 
 
 I do not believe a half dozen authentic cases can 
 be found in history where droll and ignorant beauties 
 maintained a long reign in the world of fashion. 
 Beauty attracts, but it must be supplemented by 
 other qualities to hold more than one infatuated man 
 — and even that rarely occurs. 
 
 Every day we may observe beautiful women neg- 
 lected for plainer ones, who know how to amuse and 
 entertain men. 
 
 If we carefully study the lives of the beautiful and 
 brainless women of every era, we will find they were 
 never permanent rulers. They were compelled to 
 seek new audiences constantly, and their lovers left 
 them for other charmers. This is not true of the men- 
 tally endowed beauty. In the career of Mile, de 
 L'Enclos, which lasted until her eightieth year, it is 
 said only one of her many admirers ever wearied of 
 her, so completely was she skilled in the art of fasci- 
 nation, which means simply the ability to entertain. 
 
 I hope Mr. Prevost's idea that men have ceased to 
 demand beauty in women will never be exemplified 
 by fact. 
 
 I do not believe it will. Never were women so 
 wisely prepared to combat time and his train of petty 
 persecutors, care, and worry, and disease, as now. 
 
 Science and specialists are teaching them how to 
 preserve complexion and form into old age. 
 
 The New Thought Science is teaching them how 
 to illuminate features bv expression — the expression 
 
192 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 of the Divine Self — which is to mere beauty of face 
 what the electric spark is to the porcelain globe. 
 
 The old ideas of gloomy, pessimistic piety, which 
 used to elongate the faces of many devout believers in 
 hell fire and eternal damnation have given way to a 
 religion of cheerful optimism and love, which radiates 
 the countenance and defies age. 
 
 The outdoor life which women indulge in so 
 universally now is another aid to beaut^^ and good 
 health ! And it seems safe to predict that the coming 
 generation of women will combine brains and phys- 
 ical beauty as never before in the history of the race. 
 
 Back of thy parents and grandparents lies 
 The great Eternal Will. That, too, is thine 
 Inheritance — strong, beautiful, divine. 
 
FAMOUS AND INFAMOUS 
 WOMEN 
 
 13 
 
Famous and Infamous Women 
 
 If you have access to a good library (as you surely 
 have in these days of many libraries), devote a half 
 hour a day, at least, to reading history. 
 
 Select histories which will tell you about the 
 famous rulers, kings, queens, emperors, statesmen, 
 senators of old. 
 
 Read about the Medicis, Catharine of Russia, 
 Cleopatra, Napoleon, the doges of Venice, the queens 
 of England, the kings of France and the famous and 
 infamous women who ruled their courts — and, after 
 you have read, think about the poor little fleeting time 
 of glory mixed with misery which these people 
 enjoyed. 
 
 They were all eaten up with fear, jealousy, rival- 
 ries and hatred. Fathers and sons, mothers and sons, 
 became enemies when personal ambition stood 
 between them; enemies to the death. Charles V. of 
 Spain was a party to the murder of his own son; Cleo- 
 patra led an army against her son; Nero plotted to kill 
 his own mother, and a hundred instances could be 
 cited where men and women famous in the annals of 
 history as great rulers connived at the murder or 
 imprisonment of their own next of kin in order to 
 retain or obtain a little fleeting temporal power. 
 
 The number of women who sold self-respect, 
 honor, virtue and all claim to the world's respect for 
 the sake of shining in the courts of kings is legion. 
 
 One is led to question why so many such famous 
 
 195 
 
196 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 men and women of history are at the same time 
 infamous. 
 
 Reason will explain. 
 
 Concentration of tliouglit, unswerving purpose and 
 intensity of feeling are what bring results in this life. 
 Whether this combination is directed to good or bad 
 objects, the result is obtained; the object is gained. 
 
 We remember those people because they were 
 vital influences in the world; they felt, tliouglit and 
 lived intensely. They lived selfish and evil lives, oft- 
 times because they knew no better; their aims were 
 unworthy of their mental endowments; but they 
 suffered the punishments of their own errors and sins 
 by the continual state of fear in which they dwelt ; fear 
 that their schemes would be detected ; that their plots 
 would be revealed ; that their own confederates would 
 turn against them, as they frequently did, and fear of 
 assassination and poison from their enemies. 
 
 We cannot envy them their ill-gained power and 
 glory. 
 
 But we can learn from them the lesson of the law 
 of intense feeling and concentrated thought. 
 
 In this more enlightened age we know murder 
 does not pay; that anything which is gained at the cost 
 of another life is not worth while. We have grown 
 to where our statesmen do not murder one another 
 or their own children to gain power and position. 
 
 But if our philanthropic men, our great reformers 
 and our makers of thought to-day would put the same 
 amount of vital force into their undertakings which 
 actuated those wicked old celebrities, there is nothing 
 which might not be accomplished for the good of 
 humanity. 
 
 A good and bright woman, who has lived a long life 
 
Famous and Infamous Women 197 
 
 of loneliness and has maintained her self-respect and 
 the respect of her fellow beings, asked recently why 
 the women of history were, as a rule, so disreputable 
 in conduct, and why time continued to emblazon their 
 names with immortality. She did not understand the 
 law of thought; she did not realize that tJiougM is 
 energy, and that negative virtue and quiet and placid 
 mental conditions achieve little for an individual, or 
 for the race at large. 
 
 Goodness and virtue and all the qualities which go 
 toward the constructive forces of nature ought to be 
 vital and intense. Only so can they combat the 
 destructive forces in the world. 
 
 Many a good woman has placidly loved her hus- 
 band and been forgotten by him and the world; but 
 the world remembers Heloise and Cleopatra because 
 they loved intensely. 
 
 However misdirected the love may have been, it 
 was yet a vital flame that burned its path along the 
 centuries and commanded the memory of the world. 
 
 It has been the trend of modern education to eradi- 
 cate all intense feeling from the heart of the race. 
 
 The education which does this for humanity 
 destroys all possible hope of great achievements for 
 the future. 
 
 Many of the great people of history were possessed 
 of the same force which is contained in destructive 
 lightning. It behooves us not to do away with light- 
 ning, but to direct its power into radiant energy, into 
 beneficent electricity. 
 
 Then we may all become ''Saviors of the World" 
 and hasten the millennium of universal peace. 
 
 That era can never be brought about by interna- 
 tional congresses of amiable, good-intentioned people, 
 who meet and mildly talk over their theories. 
 
198 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Were one human being to sweep across the world 
 to-day fired with the same tremendous impulse for 
 peace which actuated Napoleon for war, Cleopatra for 
 power, Heloise for love, universal disarmament would 
 result. 
 
 Joan of Arc is a shining example of what such a 
 concentrated purpose for good can accomplish. 
 
 It is no wonder her name grows more radiant with 
 the passing of centuries. 
 
 A gloomy Christian is a paradox. 
 
 /^■' 
 
ENEMIES TO HAPPINESS 
 
Enemies to Happiness 
 
 Remorse and Regret are both enemies to Success 
 and Happiness. Regret wastes our time, taking us 
 back over the fields of lost pleasures, departed youth 
 and missed opportunities. She leads us to cemeteries, 
 and bids us sit by old tombs and weep for those who 
 cannot return to us here. 
 
 Such an hour may prove a means of spiritual 
 growth, if it is an exceptional experience. But when 
 Regret is our daily companion, and when she rises 
 with us in the morning, walks beside us all day and 
 retires with us and directs our dreams at night, she is 
 our worst enemy. 
 
 She is wasting the strength which should be given 
 to spiritual and mental growth ; the growth which will 
 enable us to become philosophers and to earn 
 immortality. 
 
 He who spends his time in regretting lost youth is 
 not growing into beautiful maturity or an attractive 
 old age. 
 
 He who continually mourns for the departed loved 
 ones is not keeping pace with them in spirit growth, 
 and he is widening the distance between possible 
 reunions. 
 
 The disembodied spirit is going forward in the 
 planes beyond; unless we go forward here, how can 
 we hope for a reunion ? 
 
 However inevitable and lasting may be the loneli- 
 ness and sorrow we feel for those passed on, we must 
 not make Regret our daily companion. We must 
 
 201 
 
202 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 work and grow, and Regret does not permit us to do 
 either. 
 
 Remorse is even a greater enemy to our best 
 development. She keeps us standing by the decaying 
 corpses of our old errors, faults and sins. 
 
 She keeps us thinking of what we have done or 
 left undone, instead of what we can do. 
 
 Remorse is a carrion crow in disguise, pretending 
 to be interested in our spiritual regeneration. 
 
 There is no regeneration in the contemplation of 
 past errors. Put them under your feet ; think of them 
 only as stepping stones for the future heights you are 
 to climb. 
 
 The past is past; the present and the future only 
 concern you. Put Regret and Remorse out of your 
 door and refuse to associate with them. 
 
 Hope and Resolve are your companions for the 
 future. 
 
 Attune thyself to harmonies divine. 
 
 All, all are written in the key of love; 
 
 Keep to the score and thou hast naught to fear. 
 
 Achievements yet undreamed of shall be thine. 
 
THE NEW YEAR 
 
The New Year 
 
 The New Year suggests new ideals, new ambitions, 
 new aspirations, new efforts to refined souls. Even 
 the dull or worldly minded are induced to plan some 
 new move, to better their lives at this season of the 
 year. 
 
 Many men and women who have been living in 
 folly and sin make an effort to begin over again with 
 the New Year and to abandon their evil ways. 
 
 It is not an easy thing to do, for — 
 
 When a man tries to pull himself up out of sin 
 The Devil stands ready to push him back in. 
 
 But let no single relapse discourage the soul that 
 really longs for a higher plane of life. Just in propor- 
 tion to the strength of your desire for anything on 
 earth is your strength to obtain it. 
 
 Whatever you wish to be, if you are a sane and nor- 
 mal-mmded being, that you can he. "We will be 
 what we will to be." It is not sane or normal to wish 
 to be a Shakespeare, a Mozart, a Michelangelo, or any 
 other great genius if you possess no marked talent. 
 / These colossal souls came into the world endowed 
 (with qualities which they earned in past lives. 
 
 But no matter how devoid of talent or genius you 
 may be, remember you have an immortal mind and a 
 will bestowed upon you by Divine Power, and with 
 that mind and will you can achieve whatever you 
 desire, if you are persistent and patient. 
 
 205 
 
206 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Start the New Year with that behef. Make some 
 effort toward what you desire to accomplish to-day. 
 Do not postpone it until to-morrow. To-morrow you 
 must make the second step. Each day you must in 
 some way proceed a little nearer to your aim. 
 
 If a combination of circumstances prevents you 
 from making progress one day, double your efforts the 
 next. If you have resolved to overcome some habit, 
 and in a moment of weakness you fail in your resolve, 
 do not think that signifies that you have no will power, 
 and that you must go on in the old way. It was Con- 
 fucius who said: "Not in never falling do we show 
 our strength, but in the ability to rise and go on to the 
 goal." 
 
 We all stumble and fall in pursuit of our ideals, but 
 that does not prove that our ideals are worthless, or 
 that we will not attain to them in time. 
 
 Try and take a half hour or an hour alone with 
 yourself each day this year. Sit down very quietly 
 and think of the worthy and unselfish things you would 
 like to do, and believe you are to be shown the way 
 to do them. Ask for light and guidance, and it will be 
 given. Breathe deep breaths, filling every lung cell. 
 Physical, mental and spiritual power will result. 
 
 Start the New Year with a resolve to he kind. 
 
 Those are small words, but they have vast meaning. 
 
 Perhaps you may imagine you are always kind 
 now, but if you watch yourself for an entire day you 
 will find how difficult it is to be really kind — to treat 
 each human being and animal as you would wish to 
 be treated. 
 
 We all talk loudly of the need of the churches to 
 establish a religion of brotherhood in the world, but 
 what are we doing toward it ourselves? 
 
The New Year 207 
 
 Watch your tongue, that you speak only kind 
 words, and watch your mind, that it harbors only kind 
 thoughts. That is resolve enough to make for one 
 year. If you do that, you will take a long step toward 
 "saving" your own soul and evangelizing the world, 
 for all that evangelization means is kindness — love of 
 God and our fellow men. Begin your efforts toward 
 kindness with those nearest you — at home, in business, 
 in society. Extend them to public places and in shops, 
 stores, train and street; think and act kindness, amia- 
 bility, good nature, cheerfulness, peace. 
 
 You will be astonished at your influence as the 
 months go by, and you will know that you are helping 
 to bring about the conditions you desire in the world. 
 
 Though mine be narrow, and yours be broad, 
 On my ladder alone can I climb to God. 
 
ENTHUSIASM 
 
Enth 
 
 usiasm 
 
 Whatever you are doing, cultivate enthusiasm for 
 your task. Enthusiasm is the first ingredient of suc- 
 cess, and the second in great achievement. The first 
 must be talent for your work. 
 
 Success, from a worldly point of view, may come 
 without talent if you have enough enthusiasm and 
 perseverance. 
 
 I asked an art critic why he did not consider a 
 certain painting under observation a real work of art. 
 
 He answered: It lacks enthusiasm. I think the 
 artist who painted it was not enthusiastic and not 
 positive enough. The result shows in a painting 
 which just misses being good." 
 
 Perhaps the artist might say that he could feel no 
 enthusiasm when obliged to make art boil his pot. 
 
 One hears much such talk in the world. 
 
 But some of the greatest works of men in all fields 
 of art have been created under conditions of distress- 
 ing need. 
 
 The flame which is lighted to boil a tea kettle can 
 be as beautiful and as intense as one which is lighted 
 merely to observe. 
 
 If the kettle hinders the flame from rising higher, 
 it often sends it out in a wider circuit. 
 
 And when the pot is boiling and removed, the 
 flame has gained enough power to warm a whole 
 house. 
 
 Whatever you are doing in the way of work, 
 therefore, remember to keep the flame bright and 
 
 211 
 
212 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 fervent, for therein lies your best hope of making the 
 world appreciate your efforts. 
 
 Exactly what you are thinking and feeling about 
 your task will affect all those who see it. 
 
 If you are mechanical and phlegmatic, working 
 like a machine, and wishing your task over, do not 
 expect to stir the world with what you achieve, how- 
 ever perfect may be your technique. 
 
 If you are devoid of enthusiasm, know that those 
 who look upon the finished result will be likewise. 
 
 I knew a man who wrote sentences which were 
 like perfect mosaics, so beautifully rounded and exqui- 
 site were they. 
 
 His great desire was to become a novelist. When 
 his novel appeared it was a beautiful piece of litera- 
 ture, yet it failed to interest the public. Speaking of 
 it, the man said he had driven himself to finish the 
 book after losing all interest in the characters. Often 
 he kept away from his work for weeks, forgetting his 
 characters, and being obliged to read the work over 
 to pick up the lost thread, and then fairly hating the 
 book. 
 
 It was small wonder it failed. 
 
 This man was an essayist. He had loved to write 
 brief and brilliant articles which could be finished at 
 a sitting. 
 
 When he attempted to write a novel he went 
 outside of his true sphere, and the interest and enthu- 
 siasm which characterize his other work were lack- 
 ing. 
 
 Inspiration and enthusiasm, however, are fre- 
 quently waiting close by for the call of the artist or 
 artisan in any work. It is an erroneous idea to imagine 
 they must come first and impel to action. Whatever 
 
Enthusiasm 213 
 
 your work, do not wait for inspiration to coax you or 
 force you to application. 
 
 A great painter told me he went every day to his 
 studio during working months and invited inspiration, 
 however coy and elusive, to come to his aid. 
 
 Many of his most beautiful creations had been 
 accomplished after a seemingly hopeless beginning. 
 
 To make some effort at achievement each day and 
 to keep working — that is the way to attain proficiency 
 and reach final results. And to focus the mind on the 
 task and feel that it is the most important effort in the 
 world while it lasts is to give it a vital quality which 
 will affect all who contemplate it afterward. 
 
 Cultivate interest and enthusiasm. 
 
 No mortal yet has measured his full force; 
 It is a river, rising in God's thought. 
 And emptying in the soul of man. 
 
BRACE UP 
 
Brace Up 
 
 If you are discouraged and blue and life looks 
 hard and the future hopeless to-day, do not grow 
 cowardly and think of self-destruction as the door of 
 escape. 
 
 You did not make yourself. You cannot unmake 
 yourself. 
 
 By no process of reasoning can you explain this 
 wonderful marvel of the life principle within you. 
 Science has found all the ingredients which compose 
 an egg chemically, and an egg which resembles the 
 hen's product can be manufactured. 
 
 But it will not produce life. A certain low order 
 of fish life has been produced in the chemical labora- 
 tory. But the germs spawned by the fish had first to 
 he employed. 
 
 Nothing can produce life but that unnamable mys- 
 terious Power back of the universe. Created beings 
 carry on the life principle through succeeding genera- 
 tions and centuries, but its production and creation 
 remain God's secret. He who imagines he can 
 destroy that principle is as great a fool as he who says 
 he can explain it. And he is a criminal besides. 
 
 All that death does is to shift the scene of action to 
 another form and plane. 
 
 If you are miserable and unhappy you do not 
 become happy by going to another town or state. 
 You carry your wretchedness with you. 
 
 It is precisely the same when you rush out of the 
 body by your own act. If you are called out of the 
 
 217 
 
218 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 body by the same Power that brought you into the 
 world, then it is safe to suppose that conditions are 
 ready for you to start anew in another place. 
 
 Wait for that call. 
 
 The actor who rushes upon the stage before his 
 cue is given spoils the play and ruins his own chances 
 for glory. 
 
 Keep behind the earthly scenes until you hear the 
 call. Meanwhile think well of your lines and be 
 ready to do your best when called. 
 
 However discouraged you may be thousands of 
 successful and happy people in the world to-day have 
 been just as discouraged and unhappy as you are at 
 some time in their L'ves. 
 
 In Greater New York there lives to-day a woman 
 who less than a year ago harbored dark, despairing 
 thoughts of suicide. 
 
 She had made a mistake; she had lost her self- 
 respect, and every imaginable trouble seemed to 
 threaten her. Hunger and misery for those dear to 
 her and dependent upon her, with despair and 
 remorse, all combined to turn her thoughts toward the 
 coward's goal — suicide. 
 
 But seeming accident deterred her, and now in 
 less than a year all has changed. She has risen to new 
 spiritual and moral heights, she has obtained work and 
 is leading a good, useful. Christian life. 
 
 She is making those dear to her happy and com- 
 fortable. 
 
 How much better than to have sunk them in the 
 depths of a lifelong sorrow by a rash attempt at self- 
 destruction — an attempt which destroys only the outer 
 shell, but leaves the real being to suffer on until it 
 works out and expiates its crime. 
 
Brace Up 219 
 
 ■^ No matter what your troubles are to-day, a year 
 may scatter them and leave you with new hope and 
 new interest in life. 
 
 If you are an invalid a year may restore your 
 strength. 
 
 This is a wonderful age, and people are beginning 
 to realize that health is greatly within one's own 
 control. 
 
 Simple food, well masticated, as little meat as possi- 
 ble, much water, continual deep breathing, to feed 
 the body with pure oxygen, and continued assertions 
 of health and strength, from the source of all energy, 
 will restore three-fourths of the invalids on earth, with 
 no aid of medical skill. A two or three months', or 
 even weeks', diet of raw vegetables, or milk and eggs, 
 would restore half of the remainder, if coupled with 
 the right mental attitude and exercise. 
 
 The day is nearing when sickness w^ill mean dis- 
 grace or lack of brain. 
 
 If you have no money and no employment, make 
 up your mind that both are coming to you. If starva- 
 tion seems imminent go to the nearest house in the 
 country and tell your condition. Not one door in one 
 hundred will shut you out before bestowing a saving 
 meal. If you are in a city the blessed Salvation Army 
 will help you and will tell you of places to find shelter 
 until you can look about and gain courage for a fresh 
 start. 
 
 Unlike most of our orthodox churches, their rooms / 
 are open night and day, and in all parts of the city in I 
 every city in the Union they are to be found. They \ 
 are doing just the work Christ did when upon earth. 
 No matter if your creed is not theirs to the letter, they 
 will help you to rise and keep out of the morgue and 
 the potter's field. 
 
220 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 After you have rested for a day, brace up morally 
 and mentally, and declare that you are going to make 
 a new start, and that the way will open, must open 
 and has already opened to you for a new life. 
 
 This assertion will strengthen you amazingly. 
 Believe in yourself, in your right to a useful, happy 
 and successful life. Remember how many men have 
 been in poverty and despair and have risen out of 
 them to power and usefulness afterward. 
 
 Trust in the invincible force of your own divine 
 soul to become one of these and believe the Angels of 
 Light who hear the cry of despairing ones on earth 
 will strengthen you. 
 
 The way will and must open for you if you turn 
 your eyes away from death and despair, upward and 
 inward. 
 
 The world needs you or you would not be. 
 Your place is waiting for you — find it! 
 
UNIVERSAL NEED 
 
Universal Need 
 
 How universally kind and thoughtful people are to 
 the blind, or the crippled. No one is ever so busy or 
 so worried or so out of temper that he cannot stop to 
 show a little courtesy and consideration to a blind man 
 who is groping his way along the street or through a 
 room. 
 
 The most selfish of us seem to have that impulse of 
 sympathy and helpfulness toward the blind which 
 causes people deprived of sight from birth, to think 
 the world is such a kind place. 
 
 Well, now if we only pause and consider the truth 
 about humanity we will realize that everybody is 
 blind. Whoever is going wrong is blind, for surely no 
 one ever deliberately wanted to go wrong. The most 
 disagreeable people on the face of the earth and the 
 most wicked and the most selfish are all blind. Think 
 of them as you think of the poor fellow with his cane 
 and his hands groping in front of him as he walks. 
 
 Show the same sympathy, the same desire to help 
 them to go right, and what a different feeling you will 
 find growing in your heart, and what a different world 
 you will be instrumental in building. 
 
 To be sorry for anybody is a step toward spiritual 
 education and a link in universal brotherhood. In- 
 stead of being angry and disgusted at the stupidity, the 
 selfishness and the sins of human beings we ought just 
 to be sorry for them. That is the first move toward 
 helpfulness. 
 
 Most of us are angry and disgusted at other people 
 
 223 
 
224 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 and very sorry for ourselves. That is a waste of sym- 
 pathy. Never be sorry for yourself. 
 
 Regard your sympathy as a glass through which you 
 may behold the heart of humanity. Do not turn it 
 upon yourself. While you are looking at your own 
 troubles some one may go by who needs your atten- 
 tion, and you will lose an opportunity to be kind and 
 lead a blind man across the street or to restore a crutch 
 to a cripple who has fallen. 
 
 You would even risk losing a train or being late to 
 an important engagement to do an act of mercy such 
 as that. You would be ashamed to leave the cripple 
 where he could not reach his crutch or the blind man 
 lost in a labyrinth. 
 
 We are all of us needing the crutch or a kind word 
 or look or thought, and all of us are needing a hand to 
 lead us into the right path. Yet how we push and 
 crowd and jostle one another. How we sneer and 
 criticise and condemn, so long as we do not see the 
 blind eyes or the missing limb! 
 
 What a pity that it is only the physically disabled 
 who appeal to us! 
 
 There was a man born without legs who begged 
 upon the streets, and everybody poured pennies into 
 his cup so that he was enabled to buy himself three 
 houses and to get drunk and to divorce one wife and 
 marry another like a gentleman of high society. Yet 
 people continued to pour money into his cup. 
 
 Across the street was an able-bodied man whose 
 business was crushed by the power of a corporation, 
 and he had a mother and a sick sister to support, and 
 he could not afford the luxury of even one wife. 
 
 He lay awake nights trying to plan how he could 
 win success in life, and he grew pale and hollow-eyed, 
 
Universal Need 225 
 
 and no one offered him a word of pity or poured pen- 
 nies or kind words into his ear cup. And by and by 
 he broke down with the nervous strain and died. 
 
 Perhaps a little sympathy at the right time would 
 have given him courage to battle on to success. 
 
 Just think about these things a little as you hurry 
 along your way, and do not save all your sympathy 
 for the blind and lame. 
 
 Only he who finds such happiness on 
 earth can expect to find it in heaven. For 
 happiness is a mental state and can be 
 fashioned by our thoughts. 
 
EVERY-DAY OPPORTUNITIES 
 
Every-Day Opportunities 
 
 A MAN past middle age descended from an incom- 
 ing train in a narrow passage leading to a large depot. 
 He had occupied a rear car, and over one hundred 
 people were in front of him when he reached the 
 passage. Only two persons could walk abreast, and 
 the high railing on one side and the train on the other 
 made it necessary to keep to the narrow exit. 
 
 The man had important engagements awaiting him. 
 He was well bred, a gentleman, and considered the 
 little courtesies of life. 
 
 Yet without violating one of these he reached the 
 depot and the trolley car first of all those hundred 
 people. 
 
 He watched his chances, and availed himself of 
 them. 
 
 A woman in the line at his left dropped her parcel 
 and stooped to recover it. He slipped in front of her 
 without delaying anyone in either line of march. 
 
 A man on the right paused to shift his baggage from 
 the right hand to the left, and this made another open- 
 ing. Still another held up the whole procession to 
 question a train ofBcial leaning from a car window, but 
 instead of stopping with the throng our traveler pushed 
 ahead and found a clear space, which soon enabled 
 him to reach the trolley car two or three moments in 
 advance of the first man who had descended from the 
 train. He had moved rapidly, quietly, decently and 
 without once inconveniencing a fellow traveler. 
 
 No doubt scores of passengers from the rear cars 
 
 229 
 
230 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 explained their tardy arrival at home, and at places of 
 business, as due to the procession in front of them. 
 
 This same man had begun life in the rear car. He 
 had been a poor child on a Western prairie, without 
 influence, and with meager opportunities for edu- 
 cation. 
 
 Yet, by this inborn trait, this determination to watch 
 his opportunities and push ahead, he obtained an edu- 
 cation and a desirable position in life before middle 
 age — obtained it through his own efforts. 
 
 Many of his old comrades are living in the same 
 meager environment of early youth, believing they 
 were hindered by fate from attaining success. 
 
 They regard the good fortune of their old acquaint- 
 ance as a stroke of luck. 
 
 '*He was born to be lucky," they will tell you. 
 "Things naturally went his way." 
 
 But they went his way merely because he watched 
 his chance and slipped ahead when the opening came. 
 
 These chances come to every one of us along the 
 highway of life. If we are not on the lookout the line . 
 closes up before we see the open space. 
 
 Every day I live I perceive more and more clearly 
 how the real success of life comes from within and 
 not from without. 
 
 An intense, unswerving, fixed purpose, dominates 
 all conditions. The mind which concentrates itself 
 upon the one idea, / must do this thing , does it event- 
 ually, no matter what obstacles intervene. 
 
 The mind which says, "The procession is so long 
 ahead of me it is useless for me to try to hurry; I must 
 just jog along"— that is the mind which never gets be- 
 yond the jogging pace. The procession is always 
 ahead. 
 
Every-Day Opportunities 231 
 
 A score of times it separates, opens, clears, but the 
 man who says "It is no use" is not watching and does 
 not see his opportunities. 
 
 And he dies at the rear of the column, believing *'he 
 has had no chance. " 
 
 We all have it. Few see it! Fewer still seize it. 
 
 Don't forget to praise five times where 
 you criticise once. 
 
THE MASTERS 
 
The Masters 
 
 Who and what was Buddha — is a question often 
 asked by orthodox Christians. 
 
 Owing to the highly intellectual stratum which has 
 always been the underlying force in India, the story 
 of Buddha's life is much more authentic than the early 
 lif^ of our own Great Master, Jesus Christ, although 
 he lived six hundred years earlier. Gautama Buddha 
 was the son of a high caste Rajah, and therefore a 
 prince. He was the only child of his parents, and his 
 mother died shortly after giving him birth. 
 
 The ancient literature of his land contains the story 
 of his mother having been told by an angel that she 
 was to give birth to a godchild, and in the main the 
 tale is almost identical with that of the immaculate 
 conception of Christ. In fact, these supernatural sto- 
 ries have attended the birth of all the great masters and 
 spiritual leaders. However, the young lad was reared 
 by his father as a prince, and it was not until wealth, 
 power and all earthly happiness had been laid at his 
 feet that he began to develop his insatiable longing for 
 God's truth. 
 
 He gave up home, family, power and wealth and 
 went into the desert places to pray and meditate. 
 India had degenerated from the pure religion taught 
 by those most wonderful of all books, the Vedas, and 
 idol worship and sacrifices and mortification of the 
 body were the prevailing customs when Gautama 
 began his studies. 
 
 235 
 
236 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 All the methods of fasting and mortification he 
 tested, and all he discarded as useless. He summed 
 up the religion necessary to salvation in the follow- 
 ing words: 
 
 "To cease trom all wrong-doing; 
 To get virtue; 
 
 To cleanse one's own heart — 
 This is the religion of the Buddhas." 
 
 He also formulated the "Eight-Fold Path to Right- 
 eousness": 
 
 /. Right views. 5. Right mode of livelihood. 
 
 2. Right aims. 6. Ri4jht exertion. 
 
 3. Right words. 7. Right mindfulness. 
 
 4. Right hehavior. 8. Right medUaiion and 
 
 tranquillity . 
 
 Among many other beautiful words left us by Gau- 
 tama Buddha are the following: 
 
 '':As a mother, even at the risk of her own life, pro- 
 tects her son, her only son, so let man cultivate good 
 will witliout measure toward the whole world, above, 
 below, around, unstinted, unmixed with any feeling of 
 differing or opposing interests. Let a man remain 
 steadfastly in this state of mind all the while he is 
 awake, whether he he standing, walking, sitting or 
 lying down. This state of heart is the best in the 
 world.'' 
 
 To support father and mother, 
 To cherish wife and child, 
 To follow a peaceful calling — 
 These are the greatest blessing. 
 
The Masters 237 
 
 To bestow alms and live righteously, 
 To give help to kindred, 
 Deeds which cannot be blamed — 
 These are the greatest blessing. 
 
 To abhor, and cease from sin, 
 Abstinence from strong drink, 
 Not to be weary in well-doing — 
 These are the greatest blessing. 
 
 To be long-suffering and meek, 
 To associate with the tranquil, 
 Religious talk at due season — 
 These are the greatest blessing. 
 
 Beneath the stroke o' life's changes. 
 The mind that shaketh not, 
 Without grief or passion, and secure — 
 These are the greatest blessing. 
 
 On every side are invincible 
 They who do acts like these ; 
 On every side they walk in safety — 
 And theirs is the greatest blessing. 
 
 For never in this world does hatred cease hy hatred; 
 Hatred ceases hy love; this is always its nature. 
 
 One may conquer a thousand thousand men in battle, 
 But he who conquers himself alone is the greatest victor. 
 
 Let a man make himself what he preaches to others ; 
 The well-subdued may subdue others; one's self, 
 indeed, is hard to tame. 
 
238 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Let us live happily, then, not hating those who hate us! 
 Let us live free from hatred among men who hate! 
 
 He who holds back rising anger as (one might) a roll- 
 ing chariot. 
 Him, indeed, I call a driver : others only hold the reins. 
 
 Let a man overcome anger hy kindness, evil dy good; 
 Let him conquer the stingy by a gift, the liar hy truth. 
 
 The fair-minded reader will readily concede that 
 this teaching is identical with the teachings of Christ. 
 Regarding the future state of man Buddha believed 
 that each being eventually, after many incarnations, 
 dissolved into "bliss absolute" and became a part of 
 the creative source. 
 
 Buddha lived righteously and unselfishly, bore 
 much persecution and misunderstanding patiently and 
 died a holy man, leaving an indelible impress upon 
 the world for all time. 
 
 His beautiful life and beautiful teachings are worthy 
 of all respect. Christ is to me a brother, a friend, a 
 master, a guide. There is not a day when my thoughts 
 and affections do not go out to Him, reverently. That 
 does not prevent me from giving love and reverence 
 to His older brothers, sons of God, who came to 
 enlighten the world before Christ's advent. Each 
 taught according to his time and the needs of his audi- 
 ence. Yet, studied carefully, the essential truths taught 
 by each were the same. Krishna taught that love was 
 the law of the universe. Buddha taught love and self- 
 conquest. Christ taught Love and Kindness. 
 
 And all were messengers from God. 
 
The Masters 239 
 
 The religion taught by each has been prostituted by 
 millions of their followers and turned into theological 
 jargon, and thousands of Buddhists to-day are heathen 
 idolaters such as Buddha tried to save; just as thous- 
 ands of Christians are money worshipers and idol- 
 aters of fashion, and power, such as Christ tried to 
 save. 
 
 But that does not alter the glorious message each 
 Master brought to earth. 
 
 For Truth is forever the same, and love is unchange- 
 able. 
 
 Who loves mankind more than he loves 
 
 himself, 
 And cannot find room in his heart for hate. 
 May be another Christ. 
 
BUILDING KINDNESS CELLS 
 
 16 
 
\ii 
 
 Building Kindness Cells 
 
 In the laboratory of Dr. Elmer Gates, of Chevy 
 Chase, Washington, D. C, I was shown through a 
 microscope, an atom of gray matter, taken from the 
 brain of a rabbit that never saw colors. The animal 
 was chloroformed after living a few weeks in a dark 
 room. 
 
 I was shown another atom of brain, of a rabbit of 
 the same age, which had been made to see lights of 
 various colors every day of its brief life. The differ- 
 ence in the appearance of these two portions of brain 
 matter was remarkable. The portion of the brain cell, 
 subjected to the lights was finely veined like a leaf of 
 a delicate plant. Every time the animal looked at the 
 ligMy and thought of the light, as we might say, a 
 physical change took place in the brain structure. 
 That physical change created what is called color cells. 
 Just exactly so every thought of sympathy and pity 
 creates a kindness cell in the brain of human beings. 
 
 Every person on earth is making some sort of a 
 cell in his brain every waking moment of the day or 
 night. 
 
 Thoughts are things. Thought is energy — thought 
 is a creative power. That is why it is important to 
 direct the minds of human beings to good, kind, help- 
 ful thoughts. 
 
 Have you ever heard a doting parent say, "My 
 children love animals so dearly; we always keep a 
 kitten or a puppy for them to play with." Then have 
 you observed those children while at play? Have 
 
 243 
 
r 
 
 / 
 
 244 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 you seen the helpless kitten crushed under a fat little 
 arm, and heard its useless wails, as the "loving child" 
 mauled and hauled it about with no word of protest 
 from the mother? 
 
 If you called the attention of the mother to the fact 
 that the kitten or puppy was being misused, ten to one 
 she became your enemy for life, and spoke of you ever 
 afterward as an impertinent and ill-bred person who 
 undertook to tell others how to bring up their children. 
 
 One of the important features of humane work is 
 the direction of the thoughts of the parents to the 
 rights of animals. 
 
 Parentage is the oldest profession in the world for 
 men and women ; but there are the smallest number 
 of prize winners in that profession of any in the 
 world. 
 
 Many a woman believes herself a good mother 
 because she is ready to fight for her child through fire 
 and water and to walk over the dead bodies of other 
 mothers, and other children, in the efl^ort to make way 
 for her own; and because she loves her child in this 
 selfish manner, she is blind to any sufl^ering it gives 
 other human beings or animals. 
 
 Real good motherhood must include the universal 
 moilierliood. It must make a woman love her child 
 so unselfishly that she is willing it should suffer while 
 learning its lessons of kindness and thoughtfulness and 
 protection, rather than to enjoy itself while taking 
 away the toys, the privileges, or the rights of other 
 creatures — human or animal. 
 
 Almost every even half-civilized woman to-day, 
 shrinks from the sight of a cruel driver beating a horse, 
 or from seeing the kicks and blows, often given 
 wretched street dogs and cats. 
 
Building Kindness Cells 245 
 
 They are ready to report such cases of cruelty to 
 the Society. But hundreds of good women are per- 
 mitting their children to grow up with cruel instincts: 
 worse yet, they are teaching their children cruelty in 
 the cradle. 
 
 Before you question this statement, listen and think. 
 
 Do you not over and over see a mother whip a 
 hobby horse to amuse her child ? Do you not see her 
 punish an inanimate object over which the baby has 
 fallen, in order to distract the mind of the baby from 
 its hurt? 
 
 I have seen rag dolls spanked, and Teddy bears 
 beaten, by mothers, to make a baby laugh. 
 
 What can you expect of that child when it grows 
 up, save that it will revenge itself upon anybody who 
 annoys it, by physical chastisement. The boy who 
 has been educated to beat his hobby horse will beat 
 his real horse when he drives one. 
 
 The time to begin to teach a child kindness and 
 sympathy is in the cradle. Say to your children as 
 soon as they are able to play with toys, ''Be good to 
 your toys; they need love and kind usage. Let your 
 dollie rest sometimes, and handle her tenderly. Your 
 Teddy hear and your hoh'by horse are needing your 
 love.'' If your baby stumbles and falls over a chair 
 or rug, instill politeness and consideration into his 
 plastic mind, by teaching him to apologize. He will 
 be quite as much amused and distracted if you say, 
 "Excuse me, Mr. Rug, or Madam Chair, for my awk- 
 wardness; I hope I have not seriously hurt you," as 
 he will be if you say, "Naughty old rug, or chair, to 
 hurt baby," and then proceed to rain blows on the 
 poor inoffensive object. Teach your children to 
 address their toy animals in a kind and well-modulated 
 
246 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 voice instead of a loud screech. You will benefit both 
 the people of to-day, and the animal of tomorrow by 
 this course. 
 
 Tell them the truth ; that animals are very sensitive 
 to noise ; that a horse is a timid and loving creature, 
 and that a loud, harsh voice frightens it and hinders 
 it from doing its duty or obeying its owner. A low 
 voice and a gentle hand will make any horse, if taken 
 in time, faithful, willing and safe. A horse will do 
 twice the work and live twice the time in good health, 
 if it is treated with respect, gratitude and love by its 
 owner. Teach this to your children while they are 
 playing with their toys. They will never forget it. 
 
 The warden of the Connecticut State prison is a 
 wonderfully good and wise man. He is a student of 
 human nature. He said to visitors one day, if a cliild 
 is properly educated to the age of ten, no matter what 
 its inheritance, it never becomes a criminal. He did 
 not mean that children sent to fine schools, and given 
 tutors and great advantages, never became criminals. 
 He meant that children, guided in their thoughts and 
 ideas by wise teachers and parents, should have right 
 ideals, right feelings, and right desires. Children 
 should he taught consideration of the rights of other 
 creatures. That sentence includes all the needed pre- 
 ventives of crime. 
 
 Luck is the tuning of our inmost thought 
 To chord with God's great plan. 
 
WHAT IS OPTIMISM? 
 
What Is Optimism? 
 
 In this era, when rAetaphysical "New Thought" 
 is talked more continually than it is lived consistently, 
 we hear much of "Optimism." 
 
 Yet, who can define the exact meaning of that 
 word? 
 
 The man who was told to "look on the bright side 
 of things" replied that he "looked on the side that 
 was up." 
 
 To forever declare the side that is up, bright, though 
 undeniably black, is not optimism — it is nonsense. 
 ^ To turn things over and fifid a bright side, to polish 
 them and malce a bright side, that is practical 
 optimism. 
 
 Without doubt, the mental attitude helps, or hin- 
 ders, the actual effort. The man who enthusiastically 
 thinks success while working for it, achieves more 
 than double the results attained by one who couples 
 the same effort with an indifferent or unbelieving 
 mind. 
 
 Genius is not a mere capacity for hard work. 
 Hard work done without enthusiasm never stirred the 
 pulse of the world nor fired a human heart. Genius 
 is the child of enthusiasm, but it remains a child and 
 dies mute and inglorious, unless clothed with action, 
 and crowned with persistence. 
 
 Enthusiasm, Genius, Optimism — they are great 
 words; they are powerful factors in the development 
 of the individual and of the race — mighty movers in 
 the world of progress; but they possess no lasting 
 
 249 
 
250 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 value, no real ^vorth, unless harnessed to concentrated 
 effort. 
 
 Intense, optimistic thought is a mental dynamite, 
 and blasts an opening through impassable rocks. 
 
 But of what use is that opening unless we push 
 through and proceed along the way? 
 
 And, first of all, must come the consciousness and 
 the acknowledgment of the rock — the realization of 
 the necessity for mental dynamite. That is true 
 optimism, and that is the true optimist who says: "This 
 rock is formidable ; it will require all my force to open 
 a way through it, but I can and I will." And he does 
 open a way. 
 
 The world to-day is full of the self-styled optimists 
 — people 'who smile in the face of difficulty and say, 
 blandly: "There is no rock, no obstacle. The way 
 will open, if I wait. I need not disturb myself." But 
 the way does not open for such optimists, because the 
 purpose of creation is that every atom shall work out 
 its o^vn individual destiny by individual effort. Until 
 it does ^vork it out, it must be cast under the wheels 
 of Life and ground into the clay over which shall pass 
 the feet of Progress. 
 
 The optimistic housewife looks on her tarnished 
 silver and says: "It is bright underneath; I am going to 
 prove it." And she sets herself the task of scouring 
 off the discolorations. 
 
 She who simply asserts that the silver is bright 
 and shining, and continues to use it in its dull and 
 mottled state, waiting for some miracle to transform it, 
 is making herself ridiculous and spoiling the silver by 
 neglect. 
 
 Verdigris will work. Optimism should. 
 
 Many a man believes he is an optimist, when he 
 is only a drone in Nature's Hive. 
 
What Is Optimism? 251 
 
 But the drone is finally driven from the hive — and 
 dies, however cheerful may be his views. Bees 
 demand work, not opinions. 
 
 I remember a woman -who prided herself upon 
 her optimism. She was forever projecting it, like a 
 glaring searchlight, into the eyes of the unprotected. 
 Often, when I saw her approaching, I wished for 
 blinders. 
 
 She dashed in through my door one day, when a 
 howling northeaster was laying three days' siege on 
 the countryside. She wore an oilskin suit and carried 
 no umbrella. 
 
 ''What a glorious day," she said rhapsodically, 
 while she held the door open leisurely, letting in a 
 blast of wind and a deluge of rain. Then she sat 
 down on a cushioned divan, and little rivers of rain 
 ran down her skirt upon my floor. 
 
 "It is a perfectly beautiful day to go about," she 
 continued. "I just love it." 
 
 I was glad she loved it, but I would have preferred 
 a caller who disliked it sufficiently to carry an 
 umbrella and leave it outside my door. 
 
 This "optimist" made work for others by her 
 peculiar phase of optimism. That is frequently the 
 result of undiscriminating optimism. 
 
 "I al^vays see the silver lining under clouds like 
 these," she said, "and I know what lovely sunshine 
 follows this weather." 
 
 I knew it, too, but, meanwhile, I saw the puddles 
 of rain forming pools on the floor and running under 
 the edge of my rug. 
 
 My optimistic caller tramped triumphantly away, 
 to teach other benighted people how to be happy 
 though wet, and the maid and I set about cleaning up 
 the flood. 
 
252 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 "After her, the deluge," I said. 
 
 I knew a young man who wore his optimism Hke 
 a boutonniere, always in evidence. Its relation to 
 his mental powers was as a violet to his attire. 
 
 One day he came in, smiling, and said : "Congrat- 
 ulate me! I've lost my position." 
 
 "You did not like it, then?" I asked. 
 
 "Oh, yes; but I am sure it is all for the best. I 
 shall find something better soon." 
 
 "You have an opening in view ?" 
 
 "Not at all. I am not even looking for a position. 
 It will come to me." 
 
 I believe the inevitable is always right. I told the 
 young man so. But when young birds are pushed 
 from the nest by an inevitable law they are expected 
 to use their wings. 
 
 If they sit on the grass under the tree where they 
 fall and wait for something to come, that something 
 usually takes the form of an animal with a well- 
 developed appetite for tender little birds. 
 
 The young man waited two years before the 
 expected position "came. Nor was it sent to him. He 
 was obliged to look for it. Two years lost, through a 
 mistaken understanding of the word "optimism." And 
 during those two years he had been obliged to borrow 
 from his less hopeful friends, who were not as 
 advanced as he in metaphysics, but who believed in 
 seeking for what they wanted to find. 
 
 Long ago I took for my motto : 
 
 This is Love's supreme decree, 
 Only good can come to me. 
 
 It should be a rule for each immortal soul sent into 
 life to perfect itself. 
 
What Is Optimism? 253 
 
 But to prove our philosophy we must "make good" 
 ourselves. We must believe, pray, aspire, work and 
 climb. We must look in, up, about and beyond. We 
 must learn to analyze, discriminate and choose. We 
 must weed out the garden of our souls, and each 
 become a Burbank in his own domain, casting away 
 pernicious and poor material and perfecting the good 
 and valuable, making it better and more valuable by 
 our use of it. 
 
 I believe all our troubles, burdens and obstacles 
 are sent us for the best good of our souls, if we turn 
 them to that end by mental and physical effort. That 
 is my understanding of optimism. 
 
 I do not believe all these things will ''turn out for 
 the best" if we go carelessly and cheerfully along the 
 way with no focused thought, no well-directed energy. 
 Cheerfulness, and faith, and self-reliance are great 
 factors in life, but alone they do not make the optimism 
 which builds character, alters human destiny or turns 
 seeming evil to good unless the ingredient of well- 
 directed, persistent work enters into the composition. 
 
 Better an occasional mood that is not optimistic — 
 a night of tears and anxiety, followed by resolution 
 grown from despair, and effort that calls into play all 
 the latent energies — than this eternal drifting down 
 an idle sea of cheerful optimism in a ship of hope to 
 the shores of Nowhere. 
 
 I have seen a woman of talent and ability drifting 
 for years on this sea. She knows she is gifted; she 
 believes in herself; but she postpones from day to day, 
 from month to month, from year to year, all positive 
 effort, so confident is she that ''everything will come 
 out all right for her by and by." 
 
 Well for her were an overwhelming tidal wave of 
 
254 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 doubt of herself, a distrust of the future, to sweep her 
 out of her settled optimistic complacency, and arouse 
 her to the necessity for personal effort. 
 
 Self-reliance is a comrade of optimism. Self-con- 
 ceit is its foe, and leads it to destruction and failure. 
 
 Precisely the same laws apply to the country, to 
 the race, which apply to the individual. It is not the 
 satisfied, profoundly optimistic citizen who says: "My 
 country is all right; she can do no wrong; her faults 
 are the faults of youth ; let her alone and she will out- 
 grow them." It is not that kind of citizen who is the 
 true patriot. 
 
 The man who loves his country most is he who 
 strives hardest to keep her garments from trailing in 
 the mud, which left its ineradicable stains on the 
 robes of older nations; he is the man who sees and 
 warns her of impending dangers, even at the risk of 
 being called a pessimist and a sensationalist. 
 
 To look on the bright side of the oil, beef, coal, 
 railroad and political trusts is possible, if one takes the 
 larger view; the view which belongs to the eyes of 
 prophecy and sees beyond these calamities to their 
 abolishment — the view which beholds the flagrant 
 evil working out its own destruction, and giving place 
 to a newer order and a cleaner system. 
 
 That is real optimism, and the only optimism possi- 
 ble and consistent with present conditions and self- 
 respecting patriotism. 
 
 The conservative tool of capital, or the slave of old 
 traditions, who assures us that "everything is all right, 
 and that the country is in better condition than ever 
 in its history," is not the patriot — not the optimist who 
 helps uphold her honor. 
 
 The true patriot is he who makes the pathway 
 
What Is Optimism? 255 
 
 safe for new generations to tread, even at the cost of 
 temporary disorder and confusion to the present 
 generation. 
 
 Let thoughts of parents and ancestors 
 go. Think of yourself, young man, as just 
 created from space. Call to that great 
 reservoir for your inlieritance of health, 
 usefulness and power. 
 
"WHAT IS THE LOVING 
 THING TO DO?" 
 
 17 
 
"What Is the Loving Thing to Do?" 
 
 That is the motto of "Fellowship," a wonderful 
 organization founded by Benjamin Fay Mills, with no 
 creed save "Trust and Service." 
 
 What is your idea of trust, and service ? 
 
 How would you answer the question contained 
 in the motto ? 
 
 My own idea of trust is as illimitable as the word 
 indicates. Whatever happens, to helieve it is a part 
 of the divine plan. However unpleasant, however 
 painful, however disagreeable may be that happening 
 or circumstance, to determine upon finding its good 
 meaning, and to turn it to the soul's account and make 
 it a means of character building. 
 
 Trust does not, in my interpretation of the word, 
 include placid acceptance of conditions or events. 
 It means using these things as stepping stones to 
 deliverance. 
 
 When our environment is not to our liking, when 
 we are annoyed and hurt by events, the first thing to 
 do is to discover if we ourselves have not been the 
 cause of these troubles. If we realize on careful 
 analysis that we are the cause, then trust the divine 
 forces to show us the way out. 
 
 If we find we are blameless, and the troubles come 
 through what we call Fate, then again timst in divine 
 power, within ourselves and beyond ourselves, to 
 deliver us. 
 
 Meanwhile, to go upon our way doing the duty 
 
 259 
 
260 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 which lies nearest, with absolute trust in the heart 
 that we are treading the path to power. 
 
 Trust must include cheerfulness, and it must pre- 
 clude complaint, spoken or thought. It creates grati- 
 tude to the giver — for whatever comes. 
 
 Service, in the creed of "The Fellowship," to my 
 interpretation, means continual thought for others — 
 the hourly application of the Golden Rule and the 
 New Commandment; not the Sunday remembrance 
 of them. 
 
 Service, through humanity, to God — beginning in 
 the morning, in the home, the boarding-house or the 
 hotel, on the ship or on the train, on the street, in 
 public conveyances or in the shop, market place or 
 factory, and extending into the social circles, and 
 always back into the home. 
 
 True service to humanity need not consist in giving 
 endowments to churches or colleges, or in building 
 libraries and hospitals. These things are good in their 
 place, and they are good uses for money; but the serv- 
 ice most important to the world in bettering humanity 
 is the daily service of one human being toward another. 
 
 Sometimes this service takes only the form of a 
 word spoken at the right time ; a letter written at the 
 right moment; a call made or an invitation given, 
 which proves remembrance and regard. 
 
 Sometimes it means the use of time, and again the 
 use of money, and again the denial to give money, and 
 the enlightenment to give counsel. And always it 
 means an understanding of "what is the loving thing 
 to do?" 
 
 Simple as these manifestations of service sound, 
 they are most difficult to perform all the days of all 
 the years. Set forth and undertake to live a life of 
 
"What Is the Loving Thing to Do?" 261 
 
 Trust and Service just one week, and to always do the 
 loving thing, and you will appreciate the universal 
 nature of this creed of Fellowship. 
 
 Try it and see what you think of it. 
 
 But in the trying be honest with yourself. Watch 
 your words, your thoughts and your actions. Do 
 nothing for the praise of men. Do only what your 
 own best self knows to be right and best. 
 
 Never mind the times you fall back, and make 
 mistakes, and fail. Each recognition of your own 
 errors means new strength to go forward. 
 
 When you make the motto of Fellowship your 
 mental mentor, and listen to the question, "What is 
 the loving thing to do?" spoken by your heart at every 
 turn, you \vill be surprised to find how difficult is the 
 answer. 
 
 Sometimes the loving thing to do necessitates 
 inflicting pain on those you love. It means warning 
 them when they are on the downward path ; and it 
 means refusing to proceed with them if they will not 
 listen to counsel. We cannot continue to "be com- 
 panionable" when that necessitates dissipation and 
 other forms of vice. 
 
 It means to give material aid, and to deny yourself 
 for others ; and again it means to withhold material aid 
 and compel the indolent unfortunate to earn his own 
 bread. 
 
 It means controlling the quick temper and develop- 
 ing the spirit of tolerance and sympathy. But it means, 
 too, controlling the sympathies and not allowing them 
 to lead you to the performance of another's duties. 
 
 There is no more unloving tiling than to do 
 another's loorlc and let that one go free of his own 
 responsibility. 
 
262 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 A large contract, indeed, is this, to set forth with 
 the resolve to do the loving thing always and every- 
 where. 
 
 Try it! 
 
 Begin in your home. Apply the motto to your 
 household, to your treatment of your family, wife, 
 husband, children, parents, servants. 
 
 Write out the question and hang it over your 
 mantel or sideboard, where all may see and answer 
 it to their own satisfaction : 
 
 ''What is the loving thing to do?'* 
 
 Man may be 
 
 And do the thing he wishes, if he keeps 
 
 That one thought dominant thro' night and day, 
 
 And knows his strength is limitless, because 
 
 Its fountain head is God. 
 
A NEW THOUGHT ROSARY 
 
A New Thought Rosary 
 
 One of the oldest and sweetest customs among the 
 religious denominations is the telling of the beads of 
 the rosary. The Buddhists, the Mohammedans and 
 the Roman Catholics have preserved this custom, 
 whose origin cannot be traced, so remote is it. 
 
 There is something poetic and beautiful about it. 
 Without question the habit has been helpful in bring- 
 ing the minds of religious devotees under control, and 
 developing the power of concentration. 
 
 New Thought, which takes its central ideas of the 
 unity of life and the divinity within from the oldest 
 religions known to history, can be made still more 
 potent by the introduction of the rosary idea. 
 
 No beads are necessary; written phrases will serve 
 the purpose; and let each earnest soul, seeking to find 
 the light and to develop the latent powers within, pro- 
 vide its own rosary. 
 
 Are you discouraged and given to melancholy and 
 nervous moods? Do you feel that everything goes 
 against you, and that the future holds nothing but 
 sorrow for you? 
 
 Then let this be your rosary. Write down the 
 phrases and put them where you can see them as you 
 sit alone for your moments of concentration. "String 
 your beads" of these sentences : 
 
 / am peace absolute. 
 
 I am serenity. 
 
 I am happiness absolute. 
 
 Life holds nothing hut good for me. 
 
 I am realizing all my heart's desires. 
 
 265 
 
266 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 After you have learned the words by heart, you 
 will not need the written rosary; it will become a part 
 of your thoughts. 
 
 You will say your rosary over as you walk on 
 the street or sit in public conveyances, or drive in 
 your carriage, or lie in your bed; and you will find 
 such strength and power coming to you as you never 
 dreamed of possessing. 
 
 If you are worried about your health, or about your 
 financial condition, add new beads to the rosary and 
 say: 
 
 / am lieaWi, energy ^ vitality. 
 
 I am prosperity and plenty. 
 
 Opulence is miney and the wisdom to use it wisely. 
 
 Everything I do succeeds y and I am filled with 
 vitality and strength. 
 
 Familiarize yourself with these words, and make 
 the rosary a part of your daily mental and spiritual 
 exercises. 
 
 A worried and despondent business man who 
 believed he was born to misfortune acceded to the 
 wish of a friend and carried the rosary she wrote for 
 him in the lining of his hat, reading it over whenever 
 he felt the despondent mood approaching. 
 
 After a time his nerves were less tensely strung; he 
 was calmer and more philosophical. That was all. 
 
 Then came a complete business failure, and he 
 said to his friend: "You see the rosary did not work. 
 I am born for failure." 
 
 But right after the failure came the best fortune of 
 his whole life, and it came through the failure, just as 
 the erection of a fine marble building waits upon the 
 destruction of a cheap, wooden structure oftentimes. 
 
 Health, happiness, success and power have come 
 
A Nev/ Thought Rosary 267 
 
 to many lives through the repetition of one of these 
 New Thought rosaries. String one for yourself, of 
 such mental qualities as you crave, and such posses- 
 sions as you need for your happiness and usefulness. 
 You will be surprised at the result if you are faithful. 
 
 The explanation is perfectly logical and natural. 
 You simply bring the vibrations of your mind to chord 
 with those of universal good. You cease to make a 
 discord in the mental and spiritual realm. 
 
 The cells of your brain undergo a physical trans- 
 formation by your change of thoughts; and "As a man 
 thinketh, so is he" proves to be literal fact, as well as a 
 divine assertion. 
 
 If you feel the romance of your domestic life fading, 
 if love seems to be dying in your home, make your- 
 self a rosary to help bring the happiness which is the 
 earthly vestibule to heaven. 
 
 Proclaim love^ compatihility y sympathy, romance 
 and constancy as your own. Assert that you love, and 
 are loved, as in the days of your honeymoon, and shut 
 your heart, eyes and ears to any other belief. 
 
 The New Thought rosary has been known to even 
 bring Cupid back to the hearth which he was on the 
 eve of deserting. 
 
 Surely it is worth the effort of a trial. 
 
 Love much. 
 
UNTO THE END 
 
Unto the End 
 
 / Icnow not wliere to-morrow' s paths may wend, 
 Kor what the future holds; hut this I know: 
 Whichever way my feet are forced to go. 
 
 I shall he given courage to the end. 
 
 Though God that awful gift of ffis may send 
 We call long life, ivhere headstones in a row 
 Hide all of happiness, yet be it so: 
 
 I shall he given courage to the end. 
 
 If dark the deepening shadows he, that hlend 
 
 With life's pale sunlight when the sun dips low, 
 Though Joy speeds hy and Sorrow's steps are slow, 
 
 I shall he given courage to the end. 
 
 I do not question what the years portend — 
 Or good or ill, whatever wind may hlow; 
 It is enough, enough for me to know 
 
 I shall he given courage to the end. 
 
 Every individual possessed of feeling, imagination 
 and emotion faces at times great trouble, great despair. 
 Only the born idiot escapes such seasons. 
 
 Many who read the lines given above, will be 
 standing face to face with some seemingly insupport- 
 able pain, some unbearable burden. To all such I 
 would say, Keep your faith in divine goodness. 
 
 The hour when these lines were written was such 
 an hour. A burden had been placed upon shoulders 
 
 271 
 
272 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 that shrank from the responsibility; a thankless duty 
 supposed to be accomplished, presented itself anew 
 and said sternly: ''Keep on in the same painful path; 
 give up pleasures you believed you had won; I am 
 still here; you must attend to me!" 
 
 The command met with rebellion. Destiny seemed 
 relentless, cruel and unjust. Human reason found no 
 excuse for such a demand as Fate had made; yet 
 Faith came to the rescue and said : ''In resignation and 
 acceptance of the divine will alone lies happiness. 
 Whatever is, is hest!' 
 
 Then the lines were written, through blinding 
 tears. Looking from the sunlit present back upon 
 that difficult and shadowed hour, it seems strange that 
 even for a brief season doubt of God's wisdom could 
 have dominated faith. 
 
 Although the burden proved heavier even than had 
 been feared, and the duty required more sacrifice and 
 patience than was imagined, yet courage was give?! to 
 the eiid, and with the courage new strength, new 
 understanding of life, new ideals of happiness. 
 
 When the shadows rolled away and the duty was 
 ended the sun shone with greater brilliancy than ever 
 before, and there was a peace that passeth under- 
 standing in the heart that had rebelled for a season, 
 and through the accomplished duty came unexpected 
 benefits and pleasures. 
 
 Therefore I say to all you who stand at the difficult 
 turns in the winding ways of this strange life to-day: 
 Have courage; believe you will be given courage to 
 the end; go ahead without fear; do the duty nearest 
 to the best of your ability; do it with patience, with 
 trust, with confidence that it is to be the means of 
 bringing your best development. 
 
Unto the End 273 
 
 And you shall be given courage to the end and 
 recompense afterward, both here and yonder. 
 The Law never fails. 
 
 For this alone the Universe exists — 
 That man may find himself is destiny. 
 
 Should some great Angel say to me to-morrow, 
 "Thou must retread thy pathway from the start, 
 
 But God will give, in pity for thy sorrow^, 
 Some one dear wish, the nearest to thy heart." 
 
 This were my wish : From my life's dim beginning, 
 Let be what has been ; Wisdom planned the whole. 
 
 My want, my woe, my sorrow and my sinning, 
 All, all, were needed lessons for my soul. 
 
KEEP STILL AND WAIT 
 
Keep Still and Wait 
 
 There was once a woman came to me for expla- 
 nation, counsel and comfort — explanation of God's 
 seeming cruelty to her prayers, counsel upon her 
 course of action, and comfort for her despair. 
 
 She was well past the half century mark, worn, 
 prematurely aged, bruised, tired, discouraged. 
 
 She had been a woman of craving ambitions, mad 
 for material pleasures and benefits, for money, place, 
 power, prominence. All of these she had fought for, 
 even at the sacrifice of her higher convictions and in 
 defiance of the opinions of others. 
 
 She had obtained all the things she sought, and 
 each one had proven to be dead sea fruit and turned 
 to ashes on her lips. 
 
 It had all been long ago. For years she had been 
 seeking to live quietly, peacefully and happily, and to 
 be useful and good. And with each effort toward 
 usefulness came disappointment. Obstacles rose in 
 her path, discord destroyed harmony, chaos was given 
 where she hoped for order. 
 
 And so she was bitter toward God, and believed 
 He was cruel and spiteful, like an ignorant human 
 being. Instead it was the debris of old desires, lying 
 jumbled in her mind, the inharmony of her thoughts, 
 the absolute lack of concentration, the strife, the 
 remorse, the sorrow for herself and the fretful discon- 
 tent with it all, which brought the results she deplored. 
 
 In place of sitting down in the silence and saying 
 to her soul, "We have had our schooling, the lesson is 
 
 277 
 
278 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 learned and the higher truth has come; God is just, 
 and I thank Him for all He has taught me, and peace 
 is mine," she stood "with tense nerves and defiant eyes 
 and cried : "I will have peace ; I will be let alone by- 
 Fate — and only a devil would try to hinder me now 
 in my old age." 
 
 When she did not hold this thought she was fret- 
 ting about the past, and wasting her vitality in a useless 
 regret for things done. It was no wonder that she 
 found herself facing despair at every turn, and that 
 new battles awaited her with each new dawn. 
 ''Relax and he stilly was my counsel. 
 
 If a man puts his shoulder out of joint or fractures 
 it, before he can resume his duties, he must lie quiet 
 for a time and let nature remedy the evil. So, if he 
 disorders his life by wrong ambitions or desires and 
 makes havoc of his happiness he must learn to Iceej) 
 still within himself before he can restore order. 
 
 To dash about gesticulating and crying for aid will 
 never mend the shoulder, or the life. The bone and 
 the mentality must knit in repose and silence. 
 
 It is folly to wish we had not done this or that. 
 Once done we cannot undo it, and better conserve 
 our forces to repair the error by accepting its lesson 
 and making it a part of our wisdom of experience. 
 
 Let the past go. Men have been beggars in purse, 
 health and reputation at fifty, and have lived to win 
 fortune, vitality and respect. 
 
 Nothing is impossible to the soul that will wrap the 
 mantel of silence about itself and wait and believe. 
 
WHAT LIFE MEANS 
 TO ME 
 
What Life Means to Me 
 
 Exhilaration, anticipation, realization, usefulness, 
 growth — these things life has always meant, and is 
 meaning to me. 
 
 Looking backward, I recall few mornings when I 
 did not greet the day with a certain degree of exhila- 
 rating expectancy. Even in times of trouble and 
 sorrow this peculiar quality of mind helped me over 
 obstacles to happiness which, retrospectively viewed, 
 seemed insurmountable. A peculiar spiritual egotism 
 possibly it might be called, for it led me to look for 
 special dispensations of Providence in my behalf, and 
 a setting aside of nature's seeming laws and regulations, 
 as well as the violating of reason's codes, that I might 
 be obliged. 
 
 Facing the deadly monotony of the commonplace, 
 as a child and a young girl, I always looked for the 
 unusual and romantic to occur. Environed by the 
 need of petty economies, I always expected sudden 
 opulence. Far from the world's center of life and 
 action, I felt that hosts of rare souls were approaching; 
 and, while hungry in heart and brain, I believed that 
 splendid banquets were in preparation for me. What 
 would otherwise have been lonely, troubled, and 
 difficult years, were made enjoyable by this exalted 
 state of the imagination. 
 
 Such concentration of expectancy, of course, 
 brought some degree of result. Unusual things did 
 happen. And that same virile, vivid imagination 
 magnified them, and made them seem colossal con- 
 
 283 
 
284 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 firmations of my hopes. The commonplace meadows 
 blossomed with flowers of beauty; and buttercups and 
 daisies looked to me like rare orchids and hothouse 
 roses. Between what really happened to enlarge and 
 brighten my horizon, and what I believed had hap- 
 pened, and what I continually expected to happen, 
 the world widened, existence grew in interest, and 
 earth palpitated with new experiences as the years 
 passed. Always I expected more and more of life, 
 and always it came in some guise. 
 
 Such a temperament must have its season of despair, 
 its melancholy moods, its self-depreciating periods, 
 and its times of utter dejection. In early youth, such 
 moods came and went like the sudden changes in our 
 American climate in a spring month. But in my 
 darkest hours, there was always a consciousness of 
 life's wonderful interest — an intensity of enjoyment 
 even of my own miseries. I was frequently sorry for 
 the dull souls who did not know how to be so unutter- 
 ably wretched as I could be. 
 
 I cannot recall a moment of my life when I wished 
 I had not been born. I have always realized the 
 inestimable privilege of living. Yet, despite this fact, 
 life in that early period, even, meant bitter battles with 
 those moods of discouragement and despondency, 
 which seemed to grow in duration and intensity as I 
 entered more fully into an understanding of the world 
 and of myself, and realized how much I wanted to do, 
 to have, and to be, and how difficult was the attain- 
 ment, virtually alone and remote from the arenas of 
 action, for my home was in Wisconsin, on a prairie, 
 a dozen miles from a town, and five from a post-office. 
 When a post-office was established three miles away, 
 I felt I was beginning to enjoy the luxuries of a 
 metropolis. 
 
What Life Means to Me 285 
 
 It required little assistance from outside sources, to 
 awaken my mind to large rejoicings, and to change 
 gloom to glory, in those early days. And thank God, 
 that quality of mind has always remained with me. It 
 is a composite quality, with equal ingredients of imag- 
 ination, vanity, unreason and philosophy. But it is 
 better than a million-dollar dower for any woman to 
 start with in life. That I placed exaggerated values 
 on many things and events, I lived to learn, often after 
 I obtained the things or passed through the events. I 
 watered my own stock, and frequently found it worth- 
 less when offered to my later judgment for sale. But 
 this was the best possible education ; of greater value 
 than Latin and Greek for my life's purposes. 
 
 The ability to express myself in verse and prose, 
 at the age of eight, led me into print at fourteen. 
 Small successes dazzled my sight so that succeeding 
 large failures were not fully seen, or lent such light 
 that I was able to grope my way safely over the dark 
 places. At first the pleasure of writing and the pleas- 
 ure of having people notice my work seemed all- 
 satisfying. It brought, however, its pains as well as its 
 joys, for unless I was praised, shadows covered my 
 sun. 
 
 There must always be discontent and pain for 
 those who lean largely for enjoyment, on the approval 
 which comes from others. 
 
 Then I began to earn money and to be helpful to 
 the family. Oh, the wonder and the joy of it ! I was 
 the youngest of four, and there was an ever-growing 
 need of money in the home, and in the homes of 
 married brothers and sisters. There were nephews 
 and nieces to assist, and the thought that my pen could 
 bestow benefits upon others, electrified me. I was 
 
286 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 very young, and there was a certain vanity in my 
 unselfishness — a pride in being looked up to, and 
 leaned upon, by my elders. This, too, as years went 
 on, brought its punishment. For being so conscious 
 of my good deeds, I was hurt if there seemed a lack 
 of appreciation on the part of their recipients. I had 
 not yet learned that "there is no such thing as ingrati- 
 tude to one who does a good deed and forgets it," and 
 that to look for any return — even gratitude from 
 another — changes benevolence to barter and sale. 
 To do good for good's sake, and to think no more 
 about it, believing the seed will grow into a harvest of / 
 goodness for the world — that alone brings happiness. 
 Yet in the main I found great satisfaction in what I 
 did with my pen, and have received full measure of 
 appreciation from the recipients of my small but con- 
 tinuous benefactions. If one failed to be appreciative, 
 another more than repaid my effort. If one disap- 
 pointed me in the use of the opportunity I offered, 
 another happily surprised me. God's law of compen- 
 sation has never yet failed me. 
 
 Then there came an hour when a new aspect of 
 life confronted me. It was a grave hour when I 
 realized that I was not a mere troubadour to sing by 
 the roadside my song to please the world's ear, and to 
 take the pennies and the flowers cast me, but that my 
 talent meant responsibility. It meant influence; it 
 meant ''noblesse oblige." I was startled when the 
 consciousness first came — startled and not altogether 
 pleased. Then it began to assume dignity, and life 
 was newly enriched. Instead of being merely a helper 
 in the home, I realized I must be a helper in the uni- 
 verse. I must mold thought, guide conduct, and sus- 
 tain purpose by my talent; and from that hour 
 
What Life Means to Me 287 
 
 humanity became my family, and all men and women 
 my blood kin, and life and work grew in pleasure and 
 importance. 
 
 When the strong, true arms of love lifted the 
 necessity of earning money from my shoulders, there 
 was no danger that indolence and pleasure would 
 drive away the habit of work. I knew I had been 
 given my talent for a purpose, and that to neglect its 
 use would be a sin. Only when I stop breathing shall 
 I feel my work is finished here. 
 
 Two crude books published before I left the 
 "teens" for the "twenties" brought no profit, and only 
 a local recognition. I had begun to be an object of 
 social courtesies in Western cities ; residents of Madi- 
 son, Milwaukee, Chicago and St. Louis invited me to 
 their homes, and life assumed new and fascinating 
 aspects. Yet these very aspects brought large dis- 
 couragements. They tested my will power, my good 
 sense, and my unselfishness ; and often I learned how 
 far I was from possessing the strength of character I 
 had believed to be my chief quality. I was a social 
 creature by nature, and the taste of city life and its 
 pleasures intoxicated me; but I realized I must do one 
 of three things: curtail my enjoyment of these pleas- 
 ures, lessen my helpfulness to others, or increase my 
 income. The last method, I reasoned, would permit 
 me to follow both inclination and duty, and I set 
 myself to the task. Poems swarmed from my pen; 
 short stories were forced from it; and nine of every 
 ten, took from three to a dozen trips, back and forth, 
 from Wisconsin to New York, before they found a 
 purchaser. Slowly but steadily my income increased; 
 not enough to meet all my growing requirements, but 
 enough to give me courage to persevere. 
 
288 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Life always meant morei to me than literary 
 achievement. To be a poet only, was never the sum 
 total of my ambitions. I longed to be a cultured 
 woman, to study languages, to be an athlete, to dress 
 well, to travel, and to make myself an ornament to 
 home and to society. I was a good horsewoman at 
 an early age, and I danced well, and I wanted to add 
 all other outdoor and indoor accomplishments to my 
 repertoire. All these things required money, and 
 there was no source of income save my pen to cover 
 such expenses. It was a hard battle, a battle fought 
 with the world and with myself; and there were many 
 defeats and many mistakes and much lack of judgment, 
 In my restless eagerness to push ahead, I often put 
 myself back. I plunged into roads I imagined the 
 great highways of Progress, and found them by-paths 
 leading to marshes and jungles, or to the Land of 
 Nowhere. But always each mistake served as a stair 
 on which I climbed to a larger understanding of the 
 world, of myself, and of life's real meaning. 
 
 I recall one serious, discouraged hour of taking 
 stock of life, when I felt I was farther away from my 
 goal than ever before, and when I came to a decision 
 that nothing but absolute adherence to duty, however 
 humdrum, distasteful, and unsatisfactory, was worth 
 while. It was on that day I wrote the following 
 verses : 
 
 I may not reach the heights I seek. 
 My untried strength may fail me ; 
 
 Or halfway up the mountain peak. 
 Fierce tempests may assail me. 
 
 But though that place I never gain, 
 
 Herein lies life's comfort for my pain — 
 I will be worthy of it. 
 
What Life Means to Me 289 
 
 I may not triumph in success, 
 
 Despite my earnest labor. 
 I may not grasp results that bless 
 
 The efforts of my neighbor. 
 But though that goal I never see, 
 This thought shall always dwell with me— 
 
 I will be worthy of it. 
 
 The golden glory of love's light 
 
 May never fall on my way. 
 My path may lead through shadowed night, 
 
 Like some deserted byway. 
 But though Hfe's dearest joy I miss. 
 There lies a nameless strength in this — 
 
 I will be worthy of it. 
 
 Marriage in 1884 took me to the wonderful land 
 of my dreams — the East. My wmter home in New 
 York and my summer home on the Connecticut shore 
 of the beautiful Long Island Sound opened up large 
 vistas of ever-increasing opportunities for improve- 
 ment, pleasure, and usefulness. I studied; I read; I 
 indulged in physical culture ; I became intimate with 
 the sea, and knew the intoxication (possible only to one 
 inland born and bred) found in and on the ocean 
 waves. That which we have always had, we never 
 fully appreciate. I entertained and was entertained 
 by many of the people whose names alone had 
 enlarged my horizon in the old Western life. I felt I 
 was dwelling in an enchanted land, and that feeling 
 has never left me, despite some disappointments and 
 disillusionments. 
 
 The materialization into personalities of some of 
 the famous names I had known, proved not always 
 happiness or satisfaction. 
 
 19 
 
290 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 Talent and genius had seemed to me like two 
 white sentinels guarding the door of the human mind 
 from the intrusion of ignoble jealousy, petty envy, and 
 unworthy selfishness. The gifted man and woman, I 
 had thought, must be the great man and woman. I 
 did not always find it so, and many of the halos I had 
 bestowed upon imagined personalities, had to be modi- 
 fied, or "cut over," or removed wholly, when the 
 actual personage was encountered. Yet life, with 
 its accustomed prodigality, gave me far more happiness 
 than disappointment in these new associations. Friend- 
 ships vital, educational, and lasting, have resulted, and 
 life has grown richer with each passing year, and its 
 meaning more potent with each experience. 
 
 There have always been those along my life's path- 
 way seeking to discourage me, to detract from my 
 work, and to question my point of view. I suppose 
 they were a part of my development, and more 
 than likely they saved me from that most disastrous 
 fault of youth — self-complacency. Early I was told 
 that all had been said before me, by great writers; 
 that I could only repeat, in a crude form, messages 
 already delivered by inspired masters. Still I wrote 
 on, as thoughts came, and believed I had been given 
 my own personal message for the world. Later, as I 
 made certain successes, I was told that my work was 
 ephemeral and only ranked with the third class in 
 literature, and that it could have no lasting effect upon 
 the world. Still I continued writing, glad to do what 
 was given me to do, though in the third class, and 
 satisfied to let its influence die with me so long as it 
 was helpful while it lasted. Critics have called my 
 poetry versification, my prose platitudes. And while 
 they have criticized I have kept at work. I have been 
 
What Life Means to Me 291 
 
 assured that rare, choice souls did not recognize me in 
 literature ; that I appealed only to the common, undis- 
 criminating minds. And yet I have worked on. 
 
 When I turned my literary craft from the still 
 waters of magazines to the large, rushing rivers of 
 American newspapers, I was given up, by these same 
 critics and by many personal acquaintances, as 
 one intellectually damned. They said I was prosti- 
 tuting my talent, and those who heretofore insisted 
 that I had never occupied any eminence in literature, 
 now seemed to think I had fallen from some hitherto 
 unrecognized altitude. Nevertheless, I kept to my 
 own ideals and followed the light of my own spirit. 
 Life was too big, feeling too intense, time too short, to 
 wait for books and magazines as a means of expression. 
 There was so much to say to an appreciative and 
 ever-increasing audience, that plain prose must assist 
 her more beautiful sister, poetry. 
 
 Every new phase of life gave me a new message 
 to humanity. Years of blest and satisfying compan- 
 ionship as a wife, where respect supplemented love, 
 a brief but wonderful knowledge of motherhood, a 
 domestic and social life full of rich and beautiful 
 experiences, travel and acquaintance with rare souls of 
 earth, all have made and are making life mean to me 
 more and more exhilaration, anticipation, realization, 
 usefulness, and growth. 
 
 To be a part of God's great universe, to be one of 
 his voices, to be a worker and a helper, means to me 
 the fullness of satisfaction. I expected much of life ; it 
 has given, in all ways, more than I expected. Every- 
 thing has happened. I have known loneliness, dis- 
 content, trouble. I have waited years for what I felt 
 Imust obtain immediately; yet for each hour of pain I 
 
292 New Thought Common Sense 
 
 have known three hours of joy, and life has been 
 good, and grows better as I walk forward. Love has 
 been more loyal and lasting, friendship sweeter and 
 more comprehensive, work more enjoyable, and fame 
 because of its aid to usefulness, more satisfying than 
 early imagination pictured. 
 
 All hail to life— life here, and life beyond! For 
 earth is but the preparatory school for a larger experi- 
 ence, for a greater usefulness. 
 
 I have come into closer acquaintance with sur- 
 rounding realms with the passing of each decade. 
 The impression of my early youth, that Invisible 
 Helpers were near those who strove to do right and 
 who sought the heights, became first a conviction, and 
 is now a Knowledge. 
 
 I know we are building our heaven 
 As we journey along by the way ; 
 
 Each thought is a nail that is driven 
 In structures that cannot decay, 
 
 And the mansion at last shall be given 
 To us as we build it to-day. 
 
 3l|77-7