“Mother, I can’t stand Maria,” one daughter says to her mother, and when inquiry is made the mother finds that what her daughter “cannot stand” is ways that differ from her own.  Sometimes, however, they are very disagreeable ways which are exactly like the ways of the person who cannot stand them.  If one person is imperious and demanding she will get especially annoyed at another person for being imperious and demanding, without a suspicion that she is objecting vehemently to a reflection of herself.

There are two ways in which people get on our nerves.  The first way lies in their difference from us in habit—­in little things and in big things; their habits are not our habits.  Their habits may be all right, and our habits may be all right, but they are “different.”  Why should we not be willing to have them different?  Is there any reason for it except the very empty one that we consciously and unconsciously want every one else to be just like us, or to believe just as we do, or to behave just as we do?  And what sense is there in that?

“I cannot stand Mrs. So-and-so; she gets into a rocking-chair and rocks and rocks until I feel as if I should go crazy!” some one says.  But why not let Mrs. So-and-so rock?  It is her chair while she is in it, and her rocking.  Why need it touch us at all?

“But,” I hear a hundred women say, “it gets on our nerves; how can we help its getting on our nerves?” The answer to that is:  “Drop it off your nerves.”  I know many women who have tried it and who have succeeded, and who are now profiting by the relief.  Sometimes the process to such freedom is a long one; sometimes it is a short one; but, either way, the very effort toward it brings nervous strength, as well as strength of character.

Take the woman who rocks.  Practically every time she rocks you should relax, actually and consciously relax your muscles and your nerves.  The woman who rocks need not know you are relaxing; it all can be done from inside.  Watch and you will find your muscles strained and tense with resistance to the rocking.  Go to work practically to drop every bit of strain that you observe.  As you drop the grossest strain it will make you more sensitive to the finer strain and you can drop that—­and it is even possiple that you may seek the woman who rocks, in order to practice on her and get free from the habit of resisting more quickly.

This seems comical—­almost ridiculous—­to think of seeking an annoyance in order to get rid of it; but, after laughing at it first, look at the idea seriously, and you will see it is common sense.  When you have learned to relax to the woman who rocks you have learned to relax to other similar annoyances.  You have been working on a principle that applies generally.  You have acquired a good habit which can never really fail you.