sentimentality only as a name.



XIV.

PROBLEMS.

THERE are very few persons who have not I had the experience of
giving up a problem in mathematics late in the evening, and waking
in the morning with the solution clear in their minds. That has been
the experience of many, too, in real-life problems. If it were more
common, a great amount of nervous strain might be saved.

There are big problems and little, real and imaginary; and some that
are merely tired nerves. In problems, the useless nervous element
often plays a large part. If the "problems" were dropped out of mind
with sufferers from nervous prostration, their progress towards
renewed health might be just twice as rapid. If they were met
normally, many nervous men and women might be entirely saved from
even a bowing acquaintance with nervous prostration. It is not a
difficult matter, that of meeting a problem normally,--simply let
it solve itself. In nine cases out of ten, if we leave it alone and
live as if it were not, it will solve itself. It is at first a
matter of continual surprise to see how surely this self-solution is
the result of a wholesome ignoring both of little problems and big
ones.

In the tenth case, where the problem must be faced at once, to face
it and decide to the best of our ability is, of course, the only