_the more you yield
to these demons of vanity and worry, the more relentlessly they harry
you_. They veritably are demons that seize you by the throat and hang
on like grim death until they suffocate and strangle you.

Do you propose, therefore, any longer to submit? Are you wilfully and
knowingly going to allow yourself to remain within their grasp?
You have a remedy in your own hands. Kill your foolish vanity by
determining to accept yourself as you are. All the efforts in the
world will not make any changes worth while. Fix upon the habits of
dress, etc., that good sense tells you are reasonable and in accord
with your age, your position and your purse, and then follow them
regardless of the fashion or the prevailing style. You know as well as
I that, unless you are a near-millionaire, you cannot possibly keep
up with the many and various changes demanded by current fashion. Then
why worry yourself by trying? Why spend your small income upon the
unattainable, or upon that which, even if you could attain it, you
would find unsatisfying and incomplete?

In your case, worry is certainly the result of mental inoccupancy.
This is sometimes called "empty headedness," and while the term seems
somewhat harsh and rough, it is pretty near the truth. If you spent
one-tenth the amount of energy seeking to put something _into_ your
head that you spend worrying as to what you shall put _on_ your head,
and how to fix it up, your life would soon be far more different than
you can now conceive.

Carelessness and laziness are both great causes of worry. The careless
man, the lazy man are each indifferent as to how their work is
done; such men seldom do well that which they undertake. Everything
carelessly or lazily done is incomplete, inadequate, incompetent, and,
therefore, a source of distress, discontent, and worry. A careless or
lazy plumber causes much worry, for, even though his victims may have
learned the lesson I am endeavoring to inculcate throughout these
pages, it is a self-evident proposition that they will not allow his
indifferent work to stand without correction. Therefore, the telephone
bell calls continually, he or his men must go out and do the work
again, and when pay-day comes, he fails to receive the check good work
would surely have made forthcoming to him.

The schoolboy, schoolgirl, has to learn this lesson, and the sooner
the better. The teacher never nags the careful and earnest student;
only the lazy