asion is so great or so small that we can afford to meet it
either with fear or without forethought. The imperative obligation to
make the most of our lives is not met by apprehending the worst, but by
doing the best we can. We have no right to give to forebodings the
time and force we need for preparing for and actually meeting our
duties.

The best cure for worry is work. In the larger number of instances if
we but do our work well we shall have no need to worry over the
results. Much of our fearful fretting is but a confession of work illy
done and the apprehension of deserved consequences.

Then faithful work by absorbing the thought and energies cures the
habit of worry. It is the empty mind that falls first prey to
foreboding, and is most easily filled with the spectres of woe. Do
your work with all your might; let it go at that, knowing that no
amount of further thought can affect the issue of it.

No matter how dark the way, how empty the scrip, the cheerful heart has
sunshine and feasting. And this not by a blind indifference, a
childish optimism, but by the blessed faculty of finding the riches
that are by every wayside, of catching at all the good there is in
living. If you would dispel your gloom and depreciate your burdens,
begin to appreciate your blessings. Do your best, seek out the best,
believe in the best, and the best shall be.

A CURE FOR THE BLUES

There is an honest confession, and one that proved to be good for the
soul of the man who made it, in the Seventy-seventh Psalm. Asaph, the
singer of that song, had had a bad spell of the blues. He was nervous,
sleepless, fretful, full of vague regrets and querulous complainings.
He had reviewed the whole troop of his imaginary miseries, and wound up
by wondering whether God really cared anything about him. One might
well believe that he had been taking in altogether too many social
functions. Whatever the cause, he had come to an exceedingly
disagreeable condition.

Despite the fact that many suppose that saintliness is never fully
achieved unless the whole nature be soured, it still remains true that
of all the blights upon this earth, few are more contrary to the will
of a God of love and sunshine than the disposition that abides in the
chronic blues. It lives on regrets for the good things that might have
been and dreadings of the evil things that yet may be. It is either
complaining or criticising.

Their gall enters the