with suffering and illness. "Thought best!" God never thought best
to give any one pain. He made His laws, and they are wholesome and
perfect and true, and if we disobey them we must suffer the
consequences! I knock my head hard against a stone and then wonder
why God thought best to give me the headache. There would be as much
sense in that as there is in much of the so-called Christian
resignation to be found in the world to-day. To be sure there are
inherited illnesses and pains, physical and mental, but the laws are
so made that the compensation of clear-sightedness and power for use
gained by working our way rightly out of all inheritances and
suffering brought by others, fully equalizes any apparent loss.

In writing there is much unnecessary nervous fatigue. The same
cramped attitude of the lungs that accompanies sewing can be
counteracted in the same way, although in neither case should a
cramped attitude be allowed at all Still the relief of a long breath
is always helpful and even necessary where one must sit in one
position for any length of time. Almost any even moderately nervous
man or woman will hold a pen as if some unseen force were trying to
pull it away, and will write with firmly set jaw, contracted throat,
and a powerful tension in the muscles of the tongue, or whatever
happens to be the most officious part of this especial individual
community. To swing the pendulum to another extreme seems not to
enter people's minds when trying to find a happy medium. Writer's
paralysis, or even the ache that comes from holding the hand so long
in a more or less cramped attitude, is easily obviated by stopping
once in an hour or half hour, stretching the fingers wide and
letting the muscles slowly relax of their own accord. Repeat this
half-a-dozen times, and after each exercise try to hold the pen or
pencil with natural lightness; it will not take many days to change