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.

If my friend had invited Mrs. Smith to supper and served baked beans
for the sake of relaxing out of the tension of her resistance to the
sugar, then she could have conquered that resistance. But to try to
conquer an annoyance like that without knowing how to yield in some
way would be, so far as I know, an impossibility. Of course, we
would prefer that our friends should not have any disagreeable,
ill-bred, personal ways, but we can go through the world without
resisting them, and there is no chance of helping any one out of
them through our own resistances.

On the other hand a way may open by which the woman's attention is
called to the very unhealthy habit of rocking--or eating sugar on
beans--if we are ready, without resistance, to point it out to her.
And if no way opens we have at least put ourselves out of bondage to
her. The second way in which other people get on our nerves is more
serious and more difficult. Mrs. So-and-so may be doing very
wrong--really very wrong; or some one who is nearly related to us
may be doing very wrong--and it may be our most earnest and sincere
desire to set him right. In such cases the strain is more intense
because we really have right on our side, in our opinion, if not in
our attitude toward the other person. Then, to recognize that if
some one else chooses to do wrong it is none of our business is one
of the most difficult things to do--for a woman, especially.

It is more difficult to recognize practically that, in so far as it