None of us can appreciate the weakening power of this strained habit of rush until we have, by the use of our own wills, directed our minds toward finding a normal habit of quiet, and yet I do not in the least exaggerate when I say that its weakening effect on the brain and nerves is frightful.

And again I repeat, the rushed feeling has nothing whatever to do with the work before us.  A woman can feel quite as rushed when she has nothing to do as when she is extremely busy.

“But,” some one says, “may I not feel pressed for time when I have more to do than I can possibly put into the time before me ?”

Oh, yes, yes—­you can feel normally pressed for time; and because of this pressure you can arrange in your mind what best to leave undone, and so relieve the pressure.  If one thing seems as important to do as another you can make up your mind that of course you can only do what you have time for, and the remainder must go.  You cannot do what you have time to do so well if you are worrying about what you have no time for.  There need be no abnormal sense of rush about it.

Just as Nature tends toward health, Nature tends toward rest—­toward the right kind of rest; and if we have lost the true knack of resting we can just as surely find it as a sunflower can find the sun.  It is not something artificial that we are trying to learn—­it is something natural and alive, something that belongs to us, and our own best instinct will come to our aid in finding it if we will only first turn our attention toward finding our own best instinct.

We must have something to rest from, and we must have something to rest for, if we want to find the real power of rest.  Then we must learn to let go of our nerves and our muscles, to leave everything in our bodies open and passive so that our circulation can have its own best way.  But we must have had some activity in order to have given our circulation a fair start before we can expect it to do its best when we are passive.

Then, what is most important, we must learn to drop all effort of our minds if we want to know how to rest; and that is difficult.  We can do it best by keeping our minds concentrated on something simple and quiet and wholesome.  For instance, you feel tired and rushed and you can have half an hour in which to rest and get rid of the rush.  Suppose you lie down on the bed and imagine yourself a turbulent lake after a storm.  The storm is dying down, dying down, until by and by there is no wind, only little dashing waves that the wind has left.  Then the waves quiet down steadily, more and more, until finally they are only ripples on the water.  Then no ripples, but the water is as still as glass.  The sun goes down.  The sky glows.  Twilight comes.  One star appears, and green banks and trees and sky and stars are all reflected in the quiet mirror of the lake, and you are the lake, and you are quiet and refreshed and rested and ready to get up and go on with your work—­to go on with it, too, better and more quietly than when you left it.