Nervous prostration is seldom the result of present trouble or work, but of work and trouble anticipated.  Mental exhaustion comes to those who look ahead, and climb mountains before reaching them.  Resolutely build a wall about to-day, and live within the inclosure.  The past may have been hard, sad, or wrong,—­but it is over.

Why not take a turn about?  Instead of worrying over unforeseen misfortune, set out with all your soul to rejoice in the unforeseen blessings of all your coming days.  “I find the gayest castles in the air that were ever piled,” says Emerson, “far better for comfort and for use than the dungeons in the air that are daily dug and caverned out by grumbling, discontented people.”

What is this world but as you take it?  Thackeray calls the world a looking-glass that gives back the reflection of one’s own face.  “Frown at it, and it will look sourly upon you; laugh at it, and it is a jolly companion.”

“There is no use in talking,” said a woman.  “Every time I move, I vow I’ll never move again.  Such neighbors as I get in with!  Seems as though they grow worse and worse.”  “Indeed?” replied her caller; “perhaps you take the worst neighbor with you when you move.”

“In the sudden thunder-storm of Independence Day,” says a news correspondent, “we were struck by the contrast between two women, each of whom had had some trying experience with the weather.  One came through the rain and hail to take refuge at the railway station, under the swaying and uncertain shelter of an escorting man’s umbrella.  Her skirts were soaked to the knees, her pink ribbons were limp, the purple of the flowers on her hat ran in streaks down the white silk.  And yet, though she was a poor girl and her holiday finery must have been relatively costly, she made the best of it with a smile and cheerful words.  The other was well sheltered; but she took the disappointment of her hopes and the possibility of a little spattering from a leaky window with frowns and fault-finding.”

       “Cries little Miss Fret,
       In a very great pet: 
    ’I hate this warm weather; it’s horrid to tan! 
       It scorches my nose,
       And it blisters my toes,
    And wherever I go I must carry a fan.’

       “Chirps little Miss Laugh: 
       ’Why, I couldn’t tell half
    The fun I am having this bright summer day! 
       I sing through the hours,
       I cull pretty flowers,
    And ride like a queen on the sweet-smelling hay.’”

Happily a new era has of late opened for our worried housekeepers, who spend their time in “the half-frantic dusting of corners, spasmodic sweeping, impatient snatching or pushing aside obstacles in the room, hurrying and skurrying upstairs and down cellar.”  “It is not,” says Prentice Mulford, “the work that exhausts them,—­it is the mental condition they are in that makes so many old and haggard at forty.”  All that is needful now to ease up their burdens is to go to