hospital patients, brought many a smile through a mist of tears.
I have seen wonderful results of mental suggestion to the discouraged
patients.
To show the effects faith thought will produce, I will relate some
instances.
One patient screaming for a hypodermic injection to relieve her pain was
given an injection of sterilized water and the pain vanished.
Another just could not sleep without her bromide. The nurse fixed up a
powder of sugar, salt and flour, the patient took the powder and went
to sleep. That was mind control and mental longing satisfied.
Another patient had to take something to stop her pains; she got
capsules of magnesia. The capsule satisfied her longing, established her
faith and gave her relief; the relief was through her mind and not by
the capsule.
I have seen several weary, despondent patients fretting and wearing
themselves out over their so-called weakness and condition. I have
placed copies of "Pep" in their hands and watched courage, faith, cheer
and sereneness come to them.
The reading of "Pep" diverted their minds from self-thought and
self-accusation to faith-thought and courage.
"Pep" is simply powerful common-sense, practical, digestible, hope,
faith, cheer and courage. One brain cannot at the same time hold its
attention on faith and fear, on joy or sorrow, on smiles and tears.
You can only think one thing at a time, and "Pep" or any other book that
can change the habit thought from fear to faith, from worry to peace, is
doing a service.
I've been in shadowland in the hospital to see for myself the actual
help that mental control will bring to sufferers and the evidence is
far above my powers to describe.
I'm mighty glad I wrote "Pep" for it has helped many a brother and
sister out of darkness into sunshine, and proved the value of right
thinking and mental control.
I've seen the lifting up of a patient's hope, when the cheery surgeon
came with hope, smiles and confidence on his face.
I've seen the drooping of spirits when well meaning but poor expressing
friends came into the patient's room and condoned and sorrowed with the
patient.
Verily "as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
Verily good cheer and good thought are good medicines.
And to these truths all good doctors say "Amen!"
READING
Let Your Final Evening's Reading be Good Stuff
When you spend the evening playing cards, the chances are you come home
late, and when you retire it takes perhaps an hour or so before you fall
to sleep.
And during the night you dream of cards, of certain hands, of certain
circumstances, or certain persons, that were prominent in the evening's
game.
The reason you do not go to sleep after an exciting evening is because
you have set your nerve carburetor at high tension and forgotten to
lower it before you go to sleep.
On the other hand, when you have been reading a restful book, full of
good thought, you establish an equilibrium, a relaxed state of nerves
and particularly you have switched the current or direction of your
day's thoughts. That change spells rest, and you retire and go to sleep
easily.
In "Pep" one of the most beneficial suggestions was that you read its
chapters one or two each evening, after you had undressed, and just
before going to bed.
You will scarcely believe what a wondrous change for the better will
happen to you if you make it a rule to have a brain clearing, mental
inventory, and nerve relaxation every night before you sleep.
Your brain works at night always; oft-times you have no remembrance of
your dreams, but if your last hour, before retiring, was an hour of
excitement, tension or unusual occupation you will likely go over it all
again in your dreams.
If you will let nothing prevent your period of soliloquy, or evening
round-up, you will establish your mental habits into a rhythm that will
give you peace, rest and benefit.
In the olden days, when most families had evening worship or family
prayers, the members of those households slept soundly and restfully.
Particularly was this so because of the habit formed of getting the mind
on peaceful, helpful, comforting, soul-satisfying thoughts that remained
fresh on the brain tablets as the members of the home circle went to
sleep.
One of the common practices in the home circle is reading, and generally
the books or papers read are of the exciting, fascinating, highly
colored imaginative type; people read stories of love, adventure, plot
or crime, and they dream these same things most every night.
I have found that it pays to read two classes of literature in the same
evening. First read your novel, story or fascinating book, and fifteen
minutes before you are ready to go to sleep, read some good, wholesome,
helpful, uplifting book, and that good stuff will be lastingly filed
away in your brain.
Finish your evening with books that are interesting, yet educational.
Such books as "Life of the Bee" by Maeterlinck, or any one of Fabre's
wonderful books on insect life; "Riddle of the Universe," by Haeckle;
Darwin's books; Drummond's "Ascent of Man;" "Walks and Talks in
Geological Fields" is a splendid mental night cap; "Power of Silence;"
"Physiology of Faith and Fear;" Emerson's "Essays;" Holmes' "Autocrat of
the Breakfast Table;" Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam; Tom Moore's Poems;
"Plutarch's Lives;" "Seneca;" "Addison;" Bulwer Lytton; Hugo; Carlyle's
"Sartor Resartus." This latter book will not fascinate you like
Carlyle's "French Revolution," but you will learn to love its fine
language, its fine analysis of character, of times, and of things.
There are countless books of the good improving kind. Always save one of
them for your solid reading, after you have read light literature or
novels. If you will get the habit you will notice great benefits and
rapid advancement in your mental apparatus.
You will sleep better, think clearer; you will learn to enjoy mental
pleasures more than material pleasures.
Fifteen minutes then to be yours, yours alone, in which you quiet,
soothe, strengthen and pacify yourself and add abundant resources and
assets.
Let the last reading in the evening be something worth storing up in
that precious brain of yours and the good worth-while deposit will grow
and produce beautiful worth-while mental fruit.
VERBOMANIA
A Widely Prevalent Modern Disease
The malady Verbomania is spreading rapidly. What's that? You have never
heard of Verbomania? Well, then, it's taken from verbosus, the Latin
word meaning abounding in words, the using of more words than is
necessary. Mania, also Latin, means to rage--excessive or unreasonable
desire; therefore, Verbomania is the excessive desire to use more words
than are necessary.
There is too much talk nowadays and too little thinking. Some persons
start their gab carburetors and they talk and talk mechanically, without
any effort on any thought, just like walking, the motion just goes by
itself.
Scientists have suggested that perhaps too much talking without thinking
is a disease. I don't see why there is any perhaps about it. Disease is
an unnatural condition, or function out of its natural order of working.
We know we can sit down and run ideas through our brain without words
and we can use a lot of words without ideas.
You have read whole pages in a book without receiving an idea. One can
rattle off words and not have ideas. When the fountain of words flows in
a desert of ideas, it's Verbomania.
People in all walks of life have the disease; they talk together too
much without any reason other than to take up time or make themselves at
ease.
Pink teas, receptions and society functions are great rookeries for
these Verbomania birds to gather and indulge in their gabfest.
The pianist through long practice is able to play a difficult
composition without thinking about it; it's automatic; it's habit in
action.
The society dodo bird is just as dexterous in spinning words without
thought, as the pianist with his difficult piece.
Our rapid mode of living, our conventions and customs are responsible
for much of the Verbomania.
I should like to take my Dictophone to a fussy "afternoon" and record
the word evacuations, the footless conversation, the forced
pleasantries, the set sentences that mingle into a hum and buzz. A
wilderness of words in a barrenness of ideas.
This useless abuse of the use of speech makes headaches, weariness,
worry, unrest; it saps strength, lowers pep, and lessens resistance.
The cure for Verbomania is to keep away from these butterfly buzz bees;
put the clothes-pin of caution on your lips; spend more time alone with
your thoughts. Nourish your idea plants that have been starved; prune
your word plants.
Read the first few chapters of "PEP," particularly the chapter in the
book about solitude and sizing up things.
Don't expose yourself to the crowds where the Verbomaniacs gather. The
disease is contagious; it's easy to acquire and hard to retire.
These are ideas put in type to convey a truth for the benefit of all who
read these lines, and it is some truth, too.
HOME
Don't Mistake a House for a Home
Love builds homes, gold builds houses. The home has a mongrel dog which
is called Prince, and all the family love it. The house had a pedigreed
bull pup that is kept in the barn.
There is all the difference between the family which has a home and the
family which has a house.
In houses we find broken hearts, worry, nervous prostration, because
there is idleness, artificiality and aimlessness. In homes we find warm
hearts, happiness and love, because those in the home have natural,
helpful occupation.
In the house is cold reserve; the occupants read when compelled to stay
in doors; they grow crabbed and cross and get into a state of habitual
dumbness and selfishness.
In the home there is unselfishness, thoughtfulness, and love expressed.
Meal time is joy time; it's the get-together period of smiling faces.
In the house the breakfast table is merely a lunch station in the
hurried trip from the bedroom to the office.
The sensitive wife of the house gets stinging remarks that abide with
her after the lord and master of the house has departed.
In the home the family gets up plenty early enough, songs and jokes,
kisses and love pats are found, the family is on time, and there is
happiness all around.
Homes are sweet, because love is present. Houses built by gold are just
hotels.
I've noticed the difference when a friend invites me to come to his home
or his house; the word he uses, home or house, indicates to me what I
will find when I go there.
In the house I meet a maid or butler at the door. I see conventional
furniture, conventional rooms. I am shown into a conventional waiting
room, and I wait conventionally for the hostess to come forward with a
stiff backbone, a forced smile, and a languid hand shake.
When I go to a home built with love, I find a tidy dressed wife at the
door, rosy children, and I get a warm old-fashioned hand clasp, and a
beaming smiling face that spells welcome.
And the dinner, that too, tells the difference between the
"depend-on-the-cook" housewife and the "wife-who-is-the-boss" home.
At the house is formality and frigidity; at the home is ease and
enjoyment. The children of the home make breaks and we love them for it;
it's natural instinct and frankness.
In the house is worry; in the home is happiness.
Verily there's a difference in the atmosphere of the house built with
gold and the home built with love; one is worthless existence, the other
worth-while living.
DIET RULES
Seven Sensible Simple Suggestions on Eating
I haven't time in this book to give reasons or show proofs for
everything I suggest. I have explained much in detail regarding the
matter of food, thought, habit and exercise in PEP, but I want right
here to give you a few definite, short, positive, helpful rules that
will pay you most wonderful dividends in health and happiness.
First--Drink two or three glasses of warm, not hot water the first thing
when you arise.
Second--Repeat this resolve as you are drinking the water, "I will be
pleasant this morning until ten o'clock and the rest of the day will
take care of itself."
Third--Walk to your office or place of business unless it is over four
miles, in which case walk the first three miles and ride the remainder
of the distance.
Fourth--Eat one or two apples every day, and do not insult nature's
proper adjustment by peeling the apple. You want the skin because it
has things in it you need for your body, and especially for your brain,
and you need especially the roughage the skin gives.
Fifth--Spend eight or nine hours a day in bed. I belong to the
sixty-three hour club; that means nine hours a day rest, seven days in a
week, which is sixty-three hours. If through business travel or other
circumstances I stay up late one or two nights a week, I balance books
before the week is up by taking a rest on Sunday afternoon or going to
bed earlier one or two nights.
Sixth--Don't stay in bed Sunday morning. It will make you tired, loggy,
stupid and cross. Get up Sunday, say, a half hour or an hour later than
week days. Later in the day take a nap if you wish.
Seventh--Spend fifteen minutes just before going to bed in quiet,
relaxed solitude. This is the time to slow down your tension, relax your
muscles and soothe the nerves. These rules you can easily remember and
if you follow them as I hope you will, the red blood will course in your
veins and joy will be in your countenance and the halo of happiness will
be around your face.
NEGATIVE ATTITUDE
A Frequent Crossed Current That Makes Misery
Every once in a while the human has a negative day. Every act, thought,
or spoken sentence has a but, a don't, a can't, or some other negative
attachment to it.
The children laugh, play and cut up in the morning and mother says, "I
don't know what I shall do with you, you are just wearing me out." This
puts a fear thought and a weakness germ both in mother and the kiddies.
On Sunday afternoon the family is resting; mother maybe gets the blues,
and says, "What's the use, I never get anywhere, go any place, it's just
grind, work and worry all the time."
Mother worries because there's a leak in the roof and the water stained
the paper in the spare room. She worries because she lives in a rented
house and says, "I have no heart to fix things up because this is a
rented house."
This negative thought indulged in brings on a misery state; it's worry,
and the worry comes because you dwell on the off side of things. You
rehearse your problem, you go over your work, you count your obstacles
and pile up the negative and fear thoughts.
Bless you, my dear sister, I know what this negative can't, don't, but,
and what's the-use thought is and how it brings misery. I know how the
children get on your nerves and make you say, "don't," all day to them.
There's only one way to drive out this negative thought and that is to
switch your will power to the positive current.
Next time you have a negative day and the fear thoughts come, just start
in one by one and count your blessings of health, blessings of home, and
blessings of love.
Nothing can hurt you. You've been through these negative days time and
time again; the clouds gathered, you were blue, lonesome, homesick and
heartsick, but next day you got busy with work, and occupation drove
away the clouds and the sunshine came. The next Sunday you get in this
negative state, just put on your hat and go out to see some neighbor or
go to the park or take a walk.
Don't sit and stew and fret over your magnified troubles.
Let the children play and laugh; they are not hurting anyone. God bless
them. They don't have worries, their little lives are all too short.
Their example of smiles and laughter should make you happy. Soon, too
soon, they will grow up and go their ways in life and how precious will
be the memories of their carefree, golden, happy childhood days.
Cut out envy; that's a mighty bad negative wire. It's the devil's
favorite food to make worry and discontent.
Many of the people you envied in the past are dead and buried. Many of
the people you envy now are at heart miserable, and you wouldn't envy
them if you could look through the artificial outside and know their
real hidden thoughts and lives.
"What's-the-use;" that's a bad thing to say, it plants worry seed.
You are all right, you have far more blessings than sorrows. You can
never be free from troubles, cares or little irritations.
Rise superior to these things; those around you are affected and
susceptible to your influence and example.
If you have a "but," and "if," a "don't," tied to every command to your
children, they will recognize your uncertainty and your negative hurtful
attitude, and they will take your threats, as well as your promises,
with a grain of salt.
Be careful in giving commands; don't put a Spanish bit in the children's
mouths to jerk them and torture them.
Be positive, make your promises and orders stick, and the kiddies will
soon know you mean what you say.
These negative "driving me crazy" sentences and attachments to your
commands spell weakness and make you drive, cajole and spin out your
orders and the children hesitate, and are slow to obey.
Let them see your positive side. Let them learn to obey with a "yes,
mamma" spirit and your orders will be less frequent, shorter and they
will be obeyed on the instant.
The kiddies learn to size you up, mamma, and if they see a wobbly,
worried, despondent, unsure attitude in you, they will discount your
threats and make allowances, saying "that's mamma's way."
Don't show your cry side but show your smile side.
Sunday is a great trial day for you, mamma, but don't let your negative
wires get the best of you.
Sing as you make the beds and tidy up; let sunshine in and drive out the
gloom.
Blue Sundays are horror days for the children; you can't expect them to
sit still like older folks. They are full of red blood and active
muscles.
Don't make Sunday a day of punishment to your children. They get their
cue from you. Don't you be negative and cross, and gloomy. It's bad
business for you and all the family.
WALKING
The Best Exercise I Know of
The benefits of walking are so quickly apparent that I hope to get you
to make the start and keep it up for two weeks, and then you will
require no further urging.
In walking there are two things most important to do in order to get the
greatest benefits: first--walk alone; second--walk your natural gait.
So many people tell me they would like to walk all, or part of the way,
between their home and office if they had company.
Company is the very thing you don't want in walking, and there are two
reasons for this: one is if you walk with a friend you will hold
yourself back, or else you will be walking faster than your natural
gait, and in either case it is a conscious effort, and this conscious
effort to a large degree will cause you to lose much of the benefit from
your walk.
The most important reason, however, is that if you walk with a friend
you are sure to talk and thus you are using your nervous energy and
tiring your brain--the very thing you should rest.
Walking gives you physical exercise which is absolutely necessary for
health. It is the best exercise I know of because you do not overdo your
strength.
Walking is beneficial because when you walk alone you give your brain a
rest. You cannot read the papers, you cannot talk, and your mental
apparatus gets complete rest.
As stated in PEP I walk from my home to my office, something less than
four miles, and it takes me about an hour to make the trip. I walk
through a beautiful park and every morning I see something new and
interesting in bird and animal life, in the vegetation and in the
geological formations through which I pass.
I recommend that you walk anywhere from three to four miles in the
morning.
If your home is more than four miles from the office, walk three or four
miles and then take the car.
Do not walk home in the evening unless the walk is a short one. In the
evening you are tired and you should conserve your strength. In the
morning you are fresh and the exercise comes to you at a time it is most
needed. It will give you strength, courage and help to keep you in a
good mood all day.
I cannot too strongly emphasize the importance of walking alone, for
then you have shifted your nerve energy from the dry cell battery of the
brain to the magneto, which is the spinal cord. The spinal cord works
automatically and it doesn't wear itself out. The brain tires if it uses
its energy.
In walking you use the thought and the brain impulse to start the
magneto then the spinal cord action is automatic.
This automatic action of the spinal cord is a wise provision of nature
to conserve strength.
The spinal cord energy is what you might call automatic habit.
For instance, in dressing and undressing yourself you will recall that
you put on or take off your clothes in regular order without giving the
matter any thought. It is just habit.
If you wish to demonstrate the difference between the control of the
physical body by brain impulse and the spinal cord impulse, try this
some morning: Start out on your walk, and mentally frame sentences like
this as you walk, "right step, left step, right step, left step," and so
on; give thought to each step you have taken and notice how tired you
will be when you have gone half a mile.
The next morning start to walk, walk naturally, give no thought to
walking, keep your mind on the beauties of nature by which you are
passing or in pleasant soliloquy and you will feel no fatigue.
There isn't a bit of theory in this chapter; it is positive practical
sense I have proved by my own experiences and by the experiences of
everyone to whom I have made this suggestion of walking alone.
The moral is this--walk every morning and walk ALONE.
ELIMINATION
The Body's Safety-First in Keeping Health
The body is made up of billions of little cells. These individual cells
are in a state of perpetual activity. They exhaust, wear away, break
down with work and rebuild on food and rest. Every process of life--the
beat of the heart, the throb of the brain in thought, the digestion of
food, the excretion of waste--all are due to the activity of groups of
highly specialized individual cells.
Every cell uses up its own material and throws off poisonous by-products
during activity. These by-products, or wastes, are very poisonous to the
individual cell as well as to the entire organism. To get rid of this
waste is one of the first duties of the system.
It is with the body, made up of its countless millions of individual
cells, just as with a city and its myriad people: the sewage of the
community must be collected and disposed of. The city forms its poisons
which we call sewage and the body its poisons, which we call excreta (or
carbonic acid, urea, uric acid, faeces, etc.) It is no more important
for a city to gather up and get rid of its poisonous sewage than for the
animal organism to collect and excrete its cell-waste. Hence, the
importance of maintaining normal and constant elimination throughout the
body.
Elimination is kept up by the alimentary tract, the kidneys, the skin,
and the lungs.
These four are the great pipe-line sewerage systems so to speak, by
which the body throws off its gaseous, liquid and solid poisons.
The lungs momentarily strain carbonic acid out of the blood and throw it
out in the expired air. They likewise exhale other noxious matters from
the system.
The alimentary tract throws off faeces, made up of the waste tissue from
the whole system, especially the digestive organs, as well as
indigestible and non-nutritious portions of the food.
The kidneys strain out urea, uric acid, and certain other poisons from
the blood and eject them through the urinary tract.
Finally the skin likewise is an excretory organ and exhales a very
definite amount of gaseous and fluid waste in the course of each
twenty-four hours.
The skin throws off from a pint to two quarts of liquid each day in the
form of vapor.