reserved the time from the moment of quitting your door to the
moment of arriving at your office.

"What? I am to cultivate my mind in the street, on the platform, in
the train, and in the crowded street again?" Precisely. Nothing
simpler! No tools required! Not even a book. Nevertheless, the
affair is not easy.

When you leave your house, concentrate your mind on a subject (no
matter what, to begin with). You will not have gone ten yards
before your mind has skipped away under your very eyes and is
larking round the corner with another subject.

Bring it back by the scruff of the neck. Ere you have reached the
station you will have brought it back about forty times. Do not
despair. Continue. Keep it up. You will succeed. You cannot by
any chance fail if you persevere. It is idle to pretend that your
mind is incapable of concentration. Do you not remember that morning
when you received a disquieting letter which demanded a very
carefully-worded answer? How you kept your mind steadily on the
subject of the answer, without a second's intermission, until you
reached your office; whereupon you instantly sat down and wrote the
answer? That was a case in which *you* were roused by circumstances
to such a degree of vitality that you were able to dominate your
mind like a tyrant. You would have no trifling. You insisted that
its work should be done, and its work was done.

By the regular practice of concentration (as to which there is no
secret--save the secret of perseverance) you can tyrannise over
your mind (which is not the highest part of *you*) every hour of the