Cheerfulness as a Life Power | Page 5

the great sorrows, the great burdens, the great hardships, the great
calamities, that cloud over the sunshine of life, as the little petty vexations, insignificant
anxieties and fear, the little daily dyings, which render our lives unhappy, and destroy our
mental elasticity, without advancing our life-work one inch. "Anxiety never yet bridged
any chasm."
"What," asks Dr. George W. Jacoby, in an "Evening Post" interview, "is the ultimate
physical effect of worry? Why, the same as that of a fatal bullet-wound or sword-thrust.
Worry kills as surely, though not so quickly, as ever gun or dagger did, and more people
have died in the last century from sheer worry than have been killed in battle."
Dr. Jacoby is one of the foremost of American brain doctors. "The investigations of the
neurologists," he says, "have laid bare no secret of Nature in recent years more startling
and interesting than the discovery that worry kills." This is the final, up-to-date word.
"Not only is it known," resumes the great neurologist, counting off his words, as it were,
on his finger-tips, "that worry kills, but the most minute details of its murderous methods
are familiar to modern scientists. It is a common belief of those who have made a special
study of the science of brain diseases that hundreds of deaths attributed to other causes
each year are due simply to worry. In plain, untechnical language, worry works its
irreparable injury through certain cells of the brain life. The insidious inroads upon the
system can be best likened to the constant falling of drops of water in one spot. In the
brain it is the insistent, never-lost idea, the single, constant thought, centered upon one
subject, which in the course of time destroys the brain cells. The healthy brain can cope
with occasional worry; it is the iteration and reiteration of disquieting thoughts which the
cells of the brain cannot successfully combat.
"The mechanical effect of worry is much the same as if the skull were laid bare and the
brain exposed to the action of a little hammer beating continually upon it day after day,
until the membranes are disintegrated and the normal functions disabled. The maddening
thought that will not be downed, the haunting, ever-present idea that is not or cannot be
banished by a supreme effort of the will, is the theoretical hammer which diminishes the
vitality of the sensitive nerve organisms, the minuteness of which makes them visible to

the eye only under a powerful microscope. The 'worry,' the thought, the single idea grows
upon one as time goes on, until the worry victim cannot throw it off. Through this, one
set or area of cells is affected. The cells are intimately connected, joined together by little
fibres, and they in turn are in close relationship with the cells of the other parts of the
brain.
"Worry is itself a species of monomania. No mental attitude is more disastrous to
personal achievement, personal happiness, and personal usefulness in the world, than
worry and its twin brother, despondency. The remedy for the evil lies in training the will
to cast off cares and seek a change of occupation, when the first warning is sounded by
Nature in intellectual lassitude. Relaxation is the certain foe of worry, and 'don't fret' one
of the healthiest of maxims."
In a life of constant worrying, we are as much behind the times as if we were to go back
to use the first steam engines that wasted ninety per cent. of the energy of the coal,
instead of having an electric dynamo that utilizes ninety per cent. of the power. Some
people waste a large percentage of their energy in fretting and stewing, in useless anxiety,
in scolding, in complaining about the weather and the perversity of inanimate things.
Others convert nearly all of their energy into power and moral sunshine. He who has
learned the true art of living will not waste his energies in friction, which accomplishes
nothing, but merely grinds out the machinery of life.
It must be relegated to the debating societies to determine which is the worse--A Nervous
Man or
A WORRYING WOMAN.
"I'm awfully worried this morning," said one woman. "What is it?" "Why, I thought of
something to worry about last night, and now I can't remember it."
A famous actress once said: "Worry is the foe of all beauty." She might have added: "It is
the foe to all health."
"It seems so heartless in me, if I do not worry about my children," said one mother.
Women nurse their troubles, as they do their babies. "Troubles grow larger," said Lady
Holland, "by nursing."
The White Knight who carried about a mousetrap, lest he be troubled with mice upon his
journeys, was not unlike those who anticipate