mind should not be laughed at.  Worries that are aroused by fatigue or illness are often most absurd, but they are not absurd 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 that delights the devil more than to scratch a man with the irritability of hunger, and have him respond to it at once by being ugly and rude to a friend; for then the irritation immediately becomes moral, and every bit of selfishness rushes up to join it, and to arouse whatever there may be of evil in the man.  It is simple to recognize this merely physical form of irritability, and we should no more allow ourselves to speak, or act, or even think from it, than we should allow ourselves to walk directly into foul air, when the good fresh air is close to us on the other side.