tim wakes
up to the sure ruin that awaits him and frees himself from its bondage
by making a great, continuous, and successful fight.

It steals the joy of married life, of fatherhood and motherhood; it
destroys social life, club life, business life, and religious life.
It robs a man of friendships and makes his days long, gloomy periods,
instead of rapidly-passing epochs of joy and happiness. It throws
around its victim a chilling atmosphere as does the iceberg, or
the snow bank; it exhales the mists and fogs of wretchedness and
misunderstanding; it chills family happiness, checks friendly
intercourse, and renders the business occupations of life curses
instead of blessings.

Worry manifests itself in a variety of ways. It is protean in its
versatility. It can be physical or mental. The hypochondriac conceives
that everything is going to the "demnition bow-wows." Nothing can
reassure him. He sees in every article of diet a hidden fiend of
dyspepsia; in every drink a demon of torture. Every man he meets is a
scoundrel, and every woman a leech. Children are growing worse
daily, and society is "rotten." The Church is organized for the mere
fattening of a raft of preachers and parsons who preach what they
don't believe and never try to practice. Lawyers and judges are all
dishonest swindlers caring nothing for honor and justice and seeking
only their fees; physicians and surgeons are pitiless wretches who
scare their patients in order to extort money from them; men in office
are waiting, lurking, hunting for chances to graft, eager to steal
from their constituents at every opportunity. He expects every thing,
every animal, every man, every woman to get the best of him--and, as a
rule, he is not disappointed. For we can nearly always be accommodated
in life and get that for which we look.

We are told that all these imaginary ills come from physical causes.
The hypochondrium is supposed to be affected, and as it is located
under the "short ribs," the hypochondriac continuously suffers from
that awful "sinking at the pit of the stomach" that makes him feel
as if the bottom had dropped out of life itself. He can neither eat,
digest his food, walk, sit, rest, work, take pleasure, exercise, or
sleep. His body is the victim of innumerable ills. His tongue, his
lips, his mouth are dry and parched, his throat full of slime and
phlegm, his stomach painful, his bowels full of gas, and he regards
himself as cursed of God--a walki