ut of it and be a free man once again. Let us see. The desire for drink
comes upon him again. If he entertain the thought, the desire, he is
lost again. His only hope, his only means of escape is this: the moment,
aye, _the very instant_ the thought comes to him, if he will put it out
of his mind he will thereby put out the little flame of the match. If he
entertain the thought the little flame will communicate itself until
almost before he is aware of it a consuming fire is raging, and then
effort is almost useless. The thought must be banished from the mind the
instant it enters; dalliance with it means failure and defeat, or a
fight that will be indescribably fiercer than it would be if the thought
is ejected at the beginning.

And here we must say a word regarding a certain great law that we may
call the "law of indirectness." A thought can be put out of the mind
easier and more successfully, not by dwelling upon it, not by attempting
to put it out _directly_, but by throwing the mind on to some other
object, by putting some other object of thought into the mind. This may
be, for example, the ideal of full and perfect self-mastery, or it may
be something of a nature entirely distinct from the thought which
presents itself, something to which the mind goes easily and naturally.
This will in time become the absorbing thought in the mind, and the
danger is past. This same course of action repeated, will gradually
grow the power of putting more readily out of mind the thought of drink
as it presents itself, and will gradually grow the power of putting into
the mind those objects of thought one most desires. The result will be
that as time passes the thought of drink will present itself less and
less, and when it does present itself it can be put out of the mind more
easily each succeeding time, until the time comes when it can be put out
without difficulty, and eventually the time will come when the thought
will enter the mind no more at all.

Still another case. You may be more or less of an irritable
nature--naturally, perhaps, provoked easily to anger. Some one says
something or does something that you dislike, and your first impulse is
to show resentment and possibly to give way to anger. In the degree that
you allow this resentment to display itself, that you allow yourself to
give way to anger, in that degree will it become easier to do the same
thing when any cause, even a very slight cause, presents itself. It