ade so that they will not leak, and that the
gasoline tank cannot be empty if the machine is to run. But a man, a
woman, is supposed to have learned these incontrovertible facts, and
should, at the same time, have learned acquiesence in them.

A train is delayed; one has an important engagement; worry seems
inevitable and excusable. But is it? Where is the use? Will it replace
the destroyed bridge, renew the washed out track, repair the broken
engine? How much better to submit to the inevitable with graceful
acceptance of the fact, than to fret, stew, worry, and at the same
time, irritate everyone around you.

How serenely Nature rebukes the impatience of the fretful worrier. A
man plants corn, wheat, barley, potatoes--or trees, that take five,
seven years to come to bearing, such as the orange, olive, walnut,
date, etc. Let him fret ever so much, worry all he likes, chafe and
fret every hour; let him go and dig up his seeds or plants to urge
their upgrowing; let him even swear in his impatient worry and
threaten to smash all his machinery, discharge his men, and turn
his stock loose; Nature goes on her way, quietly, unmoved, serenely,
unhurried, undisturbed by the folly of the one creature of earth who
is so senseless as to worry--viz., man.

Many a man's hair has turned gray, and many a woman's brow and
cheeks have become furrowed because of fretful, impatient worry over
something that could not be changed, or hastened, or improved.

My conception of life is that manhood, womanhood, should rise superior
to any and all conditions and circumstances. Whatever happens, Spirit
should be supreme, superior, in control. And until we learn that
lesson, life, so far, has failed. Inasmuch as we do learn it, life has
become a success.

CHAPTER XXII

THE WORRIES OF ANTICIPATION

He crosses every bridge before he comes to it, is a graphic and
proverbial rendering of a description of the man who worries in
anticipation. Something, sure, is going to happen. He is always
fearful, not of what is, but of what is going to be. For twenty years
he has managed to live and pay his rent, but at the beginning of each
month he begins afresh to worry where "next month's rent is going
to come from." He's collected his bills fairly well for a business
life-time, but if a debtor fails to send in his check on the very day
he begins to worry and fear lest he fail to receive it. His wife has
given him four children, but at the coming