d? Why should not
your tone always combine these qualities? Why should you not carefully
school your tone? Is it beneath you to ensure the largest possible
amount of your own 'way' by the simplest means? Or is there at the back
of your mind that peculiarly English and German idea that politeness,
sympathy, and respect for another immortal soul would imply deplorable
weakness on your part? You say that your happiness does not depend on
every person whom you happen to speak to. Yes, it does. Your happiness
is always dependent on just that person. Produce friction, and you
suffer. Idle to argue that the person has no business to be upset by
your tone! You have caused avoidable friction, simply because your
machine for dealing with your environment was suffering from pride,
ignorance, or thoughtlessness. You say I am making a mountain out of a
mole-hill. No! I am making a mountain out of ten million mole-hills.
And that is what life does. It is the little but continuous causes that
have great effects. I repeat: Why not deliberately adopt a gentle,
persuasive tone--just to see what the results are? Surely you are not
ashamed to be wise. You may smile superiorly as you read this. Yet you
know very well that more than once you _have_ resolved to use a gentle
and persuasive tone on all occasions, and that the sole reason why you
had that fearful shindy yesterday with your cousin's sister-in-law was
that you had long since failed to keep your resolve. But you were of my
mind once, and more than once.

What you have to do is to teach the new habit to your brain by daily
concentration on it; by forcing your brain to think of nothing else for
half an hour of a morning. After a time the brain will begin to remember
automatically. For, of course, the explanation of your previous
failures is that your brain, undisciplined, merely forgot at the
critical moment. The tone was out of your mouth before your brain had
waked up. It is necessary to watch, as though you were a sentinel, not
only against the wrong tone, but against the other symptoms of the
attitude of blame. Such as the frown. It is necessary to regard yourself
constantly, and in minute detail. You lie in bed for half an hour and
enthusiastically concentrate on this beautiful new scheme of the right
tone. You rise, and because you don't achieve a proper elegance of
necktie at the first knotting, you frown and swear and clench your
teeth! There is a symptom of the wrong attitud