Our Nervous Friends

Our Nervous Friends

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Nervous Friends, by Robert S.
Carroll Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to
check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or
redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Our Nervous Friends Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness
Author: Robert S. Carroll
Release Date: June, 2004 [EBook #5994] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on October 9, 2002]
Edition: 10

Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUR
NERVOUS FRIENDS ***

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.

OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness
BY
ROBERT S. CARROLL, M.D. Medical Director Highland Hospital,
Asheville, North Carolina
Author of "The Mastery of Nervousness," "The Soul in Suffering"
NEW YORK 1919

HEARTILY--TO THE HOST OF US


CHAPTER I
OUR FRIENDLY NERVES Illustrating the Capacity for Nervous
Adjustment


CHAPTER II
THE NEUROTIC Illustrating Damaging Nervous Overactivity

CHAPTER III
THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESS Illustrating Misdirected Nervous
Energy


CHAPTER IV
WRECKING A GENERATION Illustrating "The Enemy at the Gate"


CHAPTER V
THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHER Illustrating the Child
Wrongly Started


CHAPTER VI
THE MESS OF POTTAGE Illustrating Nervous Inferiority Due to
Eating-Errors


CHAPTER VII

THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY Illustrating the Wreckage of the
Pampered Body


CHAPTER VIII
LEARNING TO EAT Illustrating the Potency of Diet


CHAPTER IX
THE MAN WITH THE HOE Illustrating the Therapy of Work


CHAPTER X
THE FINE ART OF PLAY Illustrating Re-creation Through Play


CHAPTER XI
THE TANGLED SKEIN Illustrating a Tragedy of Thought Selection

CHAPTER XII
THE TROUBLED SEA Illustrating Emotional Tyranny


CHAPTER XIII
WILLING ILLNESS Illustrating Willessness and Wilfulness


CHAPTER XIV
UNTANGLING THE SNARL Illustrating the Replacing of Fatalism by
Truth


CHAPTER XV
FROM FEAR TO FAITH Illustrating the Curative Power of Helpful
Emotions


CHAPTER XVI
JUDICIOUS HARDENING Illustrating the Compelling of Health

CHAPTER XVII
THE SICK SOUL Illustrating the Sliding Moral Scale


CHAPTER XVIII
THE BATTLE WITH SELFIllustrating the Recklessness that
Disintegrates


CHAPTER XIX
THE SUFFERING OF SELF-PITY Illustrating a Moral Surrender


CHAPTER XX
THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE Illustrating Discord with Self


CHAPTER XXI

CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTER Illustrating Disciplined
Freedom


CHAPTER XXII
FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF Illustrating a Medical
Conversion


CHAPTER XXIII
THE TRIUMPH OF HARMONY Illustrating the Power of the Spirit

A REMARK
Vividly as abstractions may be presented, they rarely succeed in
revealing truths with the appealing intensity of living pictures. In Our
Nervous Friends will be found portrayed, often with photographic
clearness, a series of lives, with confidences protected, illustrating
chapter for chapter the more vital principles of the author's The
Mastery of Nervousness.


CHAPTER I
OUR FRIENDLY NERVES
"Hop up, Dick, love! See how glorious the sun is on the new snow.
Now isn't that more beautiful than your dreams? And see the birdies!

They can't find any breakfast. Let's hurry and have our morning wrestle
and dress and give them some breakie before Anne calls."
The mother is Ethel Baxter Lord. She is thirty-eight, and Dick-boy is
just five. The mother's face is striking, striking as an example of fine
chiseling of features, each line standing for sensitiveness, and each
change revealing refinement of thought. The eyes and hair are richly
brown. Slender, graceful, perennially neat, she represents the mother
beautiful, the wife inspiring, the friend beloved. Happily as we have
seen her start a new day for Dick, did she always add some cheer, some
fineness of touch, some joy of word, some stimulating helpfulness to
every greeting, to every occasion.
The home was not pretentious. Thoroughly cozy, with many artistic
touches within, it snuggled on the heights near Arlington, the close
neighbor to many of the Nation's best memories, looking out on a noble
sweep of the fine, old Potomac, with glimpses through the trees of the
Nation's Capitol, glimpses