o has been a blacksmith since he was a boy, and in whose hands
iron is like clay. I took my patient down to the smithy and said, "Here
is a young man whom I want to put to work. He will pay for the chance. I
want you first to teach him to make hand-wrought nails." This was a
good deal of a joke to the smith and to the patient, but they saw that I
was in earnest and agreed to go ahead. We got together the proper tools
and proceeded to make nails, a job which is really not very difficult.
After an hour's work, I called off my patient, much to his disgust, for
he was just beginning to be interested. But I knew that if he were to
keep on until fatigue should come, the whole matter would end in
trouble. So the next day, with some new overalls and a leather apron
added to the equipment, we proceeded to another hour's work. We went on
this way for three or four days, before the time was increased.

The interest of the patient was always fresh, he was eager for more, and
he did not taste the dregs of fatigue. Yet he did get the wholesome
exercise, and he did get the strong turning of the mind from its worry
and concern. Of course, the rest of the day was taken care of in one
way or another, but the work was the central feature. In a week, we were
at it two hours a day, in three weeks, four hours, and in a month, five
hours. He had made a handsome display of hand-wrought nails, a superior
line of pokers and shovels for fireplaces, together with a number of
very respectable andirons. On each of these larger pieces of handiwork
my patient had stamped his initials with a little steel die that was
made for him. Each piece was his own, each piece was the product of his
own versatility and his own strength. His pride and pleasure in this
work were very great, and well they might be, for it is a fine thing to
have learned to handle so intractable a material as iron. But in
handling the iron patiently and consistently until he could do it
without too much conscious thinking, and so without effort, he had also
learned to handle himself naturally, more simply and easily.

As a matter of fact, the illness which had brought this boy to me was
pretty nearly cured by his blacksmithing, because it was an illness of
the mind and of the nerves, and not of the body, although the body had
suffered in its turn. That young man, instead of becoming a nervous
invalid as he might have done, is now working steadily in partnership
with his father, in bus