rd to
the mind that is suffering from them, and to make fun of them only
brings more pain, and more worry. Gentle, loving attention, with
kindly, truthful answers, will always help. By such attention we are
really giving no importance to the worry, but only to our friend, with
the hope of soothing and quieting him out of his worries, and when he
is rested he may see the truth for himself.

We should deal with ourselves, in such cases, as gently as we would
with a friend, excepting that we can tell the truth to ourselves more
plainly than we can to most friends.

Worrying is resistance, resistance is unwillingness. Unwillingness
interferes with whatever we may want to accomplish. To be willing that
this, that, or the other should happen seems most difficult, when to
our minds, this, that, or the other would bring disaster. And yet if we
can once see clearly that worrying resistance tends toward disaster
rather than away from it, or, at the very least, takes away our
strength and endurance, it is only a matter of time before we become
able to drop our resistance altogether. But it is a matter of time;
and, when once we are faced toward freedom, we must be patient and
steady, and not expect to gain very rapidly. Theirs is indeed a hard
lot who have acquired this habit of worry, and persist in doing nothing
to gain their freedom.

"Now I have got something to worry about for the rest of my life,"
remarked a poor woman once. Her face was set toward worrying; nothing
but her own will could have turned it the other way, and yet she
deliberately chose not to use it, and so she was fixed and settled in
prison for the rest of her life.

To worry is wicked; it is wickedness of a kind that people often do not
recognize as such, and they are not fully responsible until they do;
but to prove it to be wicked is an easy matter, when once we are faced
toward freedom; and, to get over it, as I have said, is a matter of
steady, persistent patience.

As for irritability, that is also resistance; but there are two kinds
of irritability,--physical and moral.

There is an irritability that comes when we are hungry, if we have
eaten something that disagrees with us, if we are cold or tired or
uncomfortable from some other physical cause. When we feel that kind of
irritability we should ignore it, as we would ignore a little snapping
dog across the street, while at the same time removing its cause as
quickly as we can. There is nothing