easier, are applicable in all pain, and especially helpful when pain
is nervously exaggerated. It would be useless and impossible to
follow the list of various pains which we attempt to bear by means
of additional strain.

Each of us has his own personal temptation in the way of pain,--from
the dentist's chair to the most severe suffering, or the most
painful operation,--and each can apply for himself the better way of
bearing it. And it is not perhaps out of place here to speak of the
taking of ether or any anaesthetic before an operation. The power of
relaxing to the process easily and quietly brings a quicker and
pleasanter effect with less disagreeable results. One must take
ether easily in mind and body. It a man forces himself to be quiet
externally, and is frightened and excited mentally, as soon as he
has become unconscious enough to lose control of his voluntary
muscles, the impression of fright made upon the brain asserts
itself, and he struggles and resists in proportion.

These same principles of repose should be applied in illness when it
comes in other forms than that of pain. We can easily increase
whatever illness may attack us by the nervous strain which comes
from fright, anxiety, or annoyance. I have seen a woman retain a
severe cold for days more than was necessary, simply because of the
chronic state of strain she kept herself in by fretting about it;
and in another unpleasantly amusing case the sufferer's constantly
expressed annoyance took the form of working almost without
intermission to find remedies for herself. Without using patience
enough to wait for the result of one remedy, she would rush to
another until she became--so to speak--twisted and snarled in the
meshes of a cold which it took weeks thoroughly to cure. This is not