discouragement might be more than could be borne. We must appreciate
a need to have it supplied; we must see a mistake in order to shun
it.

How can we expect repose of mind when we have not even repose of
muscle? When the most external of the machine is not at our command,
surely the spirit that animates the whole cannot find its highest
plane of action. Or how can we possibly expect to know the repose
that should be at our command for every emergency, or hope to
realize the great repose behind every action, when we have not even
learned the repose in rest?

Think of Nature's resting times, and see how painful would be the
result of a digression.

Our side of the earth never turns suddenly toward the sun at night,
giving us flashes of day in the darkness. When it is night, it is
night steadily, quietly, until the time comes for day. A tree in
winter, its time for rest, never starts out with a little bud here
and there, only to be frost bitten, and so when spring-time comes,
to result in an uneven looking, imperfectly developed tree. It rests
entirely in its time for rest; and when its time for blooming comes,
its action is full and true and perfect. The grass never pushes
itself up in little, untimely blades through the winter, thus
leaving our lawns and fields full of bare patches in the warmer
season. The flowers that close at night do not half close, folding
some petals and letting others stay wide open. Indeed, so perfectly
does Nature rest when it is her time for resting, that even the
suggestion of these abnormal actions seems absolutely ridiculous.
The less we allow ourselves to be controlled by Nature's laws, the