Clothing is a perpetual source of worry to thousands.  They must keep up with the styles, the latest fashions, for to be “out of fashion,” “a back number,” gives them “a conniption fit.”  An out-of-date hat, or shirt-waist, jacket, coat, skirt, or shoe humiliates and distresses them more than would a violation of the moral law—­provided it were undetected.

To these, my worrying friends, I continually put the question:  Is it worth while?  Is the game worth the shot?  What do you gain for all your worry?  Rest and peace of mind?  Alas, no!  If the worry and effort accomplished anything, I would be the last to deprecate it, but observation and experience have taught me that the more you yield to these demons of vanity and worry, the more relentlessly they harry you.  They veritably are demons that seize you by the throat and hang on like grim death until they suffocate and strangle you.

Do you propose, therefore, any longer to submit?  Are you wilfully and knowingly going to allow yourself to remain within their grasp?  You have a remedy in your own hands.  Kill your foolish vanity by determining to accept yourself as you are.  All the efforts in the world will not make any changes worth while.  Fix upon the habits of dress, etc., that good sense tells you are reasonable and in accord with your age, your position and your purse, and then follow them regardless of the fashion or the prevailing style.  You know as well as I that, unless you are a near-millionaire, you cannot possibly keep up with the many and various changes demanded by current fashion.  Then why worry yourself by trying?  Why spend your small income upon the unattainable, or upon that which, even if you could attain it, you would find unsatisfying and incomplete?

In your case, worry is certainly the result of mental inoccupancy.  This is sometimes called “empty headedness,” and while the term seems somewhat harsh and rough, it is pretty near the truth.  If you spent one-tenth the amount of energy seeking to put something into your head that you spend worrying as to what you shall put on your head, and how to fix it up, your life would soon be far more different than you can now conceive.

Carelessness and laziness are both great causes of worry.  The careless man, the lazy man are each indifferent as to how their work is done; such men seldom do well that which they undertake.  Everything carelessly or lazily done is incomplete, inadequate, incompetent, and, therefore, a source of distress, discontent, and worry.  A careless or lazy plumber causes much worry, for, even though his victims may have learned the lesson I am endeavoring to inculcate throughout these pages, it is a self-evident proposition that they will not allow his indifferent work to stand without correction.  Therefore, the telephone bell calls continually, he or his men must go out and do the work again, and when pay-day comes, he fails to receive the check good work would surely have made forthcoming to him.