cise, fresh air, and nourishment. This instinct is the more
disobeyed because with the need for rest there seems to come an
inability to take it, so that not only is every impediment
magnified, but imaginary impediments are erected, and only a decided
and insistent use of the will in dropping everything that
interferes, whether real or imaginary, will bring a whiff of a
breeze from the true rest-current. Rest is not always silence, but
silence is always rest; and a real silence of the mind is known by
very few. Having gained that, or even approached it, we are taken by
the rest-wind itself, and it is strong enough to bear our full
weight as it swings us along to renewed life and new strength for
work to come.

The secret is to turn to silence at the first hint from nature; and
sleep should be the very essence of silence itself.

All this would be very well if we were free to take the right amount
of rest, fresh air, exercise, and nourishment; but many of us are
not. It will not be difficult for any one to call to mind half a
dozen persons who impede the good which might result from the use of
these four necessities simply by complaining that they cannot have
their full share of either. Indeed, some of us may find in ourselves
various stones of this sort stopping the way. To take what we can
and be thankful, not only enables us to gain more from every source
of health, but opens the way for us to see clearly how to get more.
This complaint, however, is less of an impediment than the whining
and fussing which come from those who are free to take all four in
abundance, and who have the necessity of their own especial physical
health so much at heart that there is room to think of little else.
These people crowd into the various schools of physical culture by
the hundred, pervade the rest-cures, and are ready for any new
physiological fad which may arise, with no result but more physical
culture, more rest-cure, and more fads. Nay, there is sometimes one
other result,--disease. That gives them something tangible to work
for or to work about. But all their eating and breathing and
exercising and resting does not bring lasting vigorous health,
simply because they work at it as an end, of which self is the
centre and circumference.

The sooner our health-instinct is developed, and then taken as a
matter of course, the sooner can the body become a perfect servant,
to be treated with true courtesy, and then forgotten. Here i