(1) Exercise No. 9. Stand erect. Concentrate thought upon self. Now let the mind affirm, quietly, resolutely, without wandering: "I am receiving helpful forces! I am open to all good influences! Streams of power for body and mind are flowing in! All is well!!" Repeat these and similar assertions calmly yet forcibly many times. Do not be passive. Keep the sense of willing strongly at the fore. Will to be in the best possible moral condition. Rise to the mood of the three-fold health :of body, of mind, of soul. (2) Continue this exercise fifteen minutes, with brief intervals of rest, at least every morning of your life. (3) Whenever worried or perplexed or weary, go into this assertive mood and welcome the forces of the good. These directions if followed will prove of priceless value to you. (a) Exercise No. 10. Stand erect. Summons a sense of resolution. Throw Will into the act of standing. Absorbed in self, think calmly but with power these words: "I am standing erect. All is well! I am conscious of nothing but good!" Attaining the Mood indicated, walk slowly and deliberately about the room. Do not strut. Be natural, yet encourage a sense of forcefulness. in a chair. Repeat, with rests, fifteen minutes. (6) Repeat every day indefinitely. (1) Exercise No. 11. Rest Stand erect. In the same Mood of Will, advance slowly to a table and take a book in the hand, or move a chair, or go to the window and look out. Every act must be a willed act, and full of Will. (2) Repeat fifteen minutes with at least six different objects. (3) Continue the exercises indefinitely. (a) Exercise No. 12. After a moment's rest, deliberately walk to a chair and be seated. Force Will into the act. Do not lop down. Do not seat yourself awkwardly. Do not sit stiffly, but easily, yet erect. Now, with the whole mind on the act of getting up, slowly rise. Try to be graceful, try to be natural, for Will may add grace to nature. Cultivate the erect posture, whether sitting, standing or walking. Cultivate the vital sense in all movements. By the vital sense is meant the feeling, “I am alive! Splendidly alive!" If you are thin-blooded, dyspeptic and nervous, this may at first be difficult, but it will help you greatly. (b) Repeat fifteen minutes. (c) Continue indefinitely. Exercise No. 13. The nervous system is very apt to become a tyrant. When it is shattered, or overtaxed, rest and a physician are imperative demands. But many people who regard themselves as well are subject to its tyranny. This may be due in part to a want of selfcontrol. The following directions may appear to be absurd; nevertheless, they suggest a way out of some nervous difficulties: Sometimes, when you are restive, you experience, on retiring, "creeping" sensations in the hair of your head; the back of your neck "tickles;" a needle is suddenly thrust into your arm, or a feather seems to be roaming here and there over your physiology. Distracted and robbed of sleep, one spot is slapped, another is pinched, another rubbed, while slumber merely "hangs around." How long is this torture to continue? So long as, and no longer than, you permit. Why should one be thus pestered? One needs not to be. It is simply a matter of Will and persistence. If you have practised the sug gestions relating to attention and abstraction, you have already acquired power over your nerves by the dominance of mind. In regard to all such matters, therefore, cultivate the ability to turn the mind elsewhere. So long as one slaps and rubs and pinches, so long will sensations diabolic continue. Cultivate indifference to the fly by ignoring it. Do not think about it at all. Put the mind upon some important and absorbing subject of interest. Will that a particular "tickle" shall appear at some other place, making choice of the exact spot; it will obey, and meanwhile you will forget it. If it does not, will it from one place to another, and finally will that it shall vanish; it will certainly obey in the end. Similarly with regard to any other distracting "feeling." As a matter of fact everyone exerts such self-control in a thousand instances daily. The clock's ticking is unnoticed; the railway train is not heard; the huckster's voice is not perceived; cattie low, and birds sing, and children shout, and a city roars, while the mind continues unmindful. Busy men who are surrounded by dense populations, and residents of Niagara, hear neither the "indistinguishable babble" of life nor the thunder of Nature. Shakespeare has said: "The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark No better a musician than the wren." The accustomed ear is deaf to the world. But the Will hides behind the tympanum to make custom its beneficent muffler. "I RESOLVE TO WILL! ATTENTION!!” THE HAND. Wisdom designed it, Low life refused it, Reason restrained it, Art, the king, gained it. Put, then, thy Will in it, -THE AUTHOR 66 CHAPTER XV. EXERCISES FOR THE HANDS. AM, and have been, any time these thirty years, a man who works with his hands — a handicraftsman. If the most nimble-fingered watch-maker among you will come to my workshop, he may set me to put a watch together, and I will set him to dissect, say, a blackbeetle's nerves. I do not wish to vaunt, but I am inclined to think that I shall manage, my job to his satisfaction sooner than he will do his piece of work to mine." Thos. H. Huxley. THEORY OF THIS CHAPTER. The hand, mind's executive organ; Enormous reaction upon Will-power of culture of mind resolutely determined in manual training. The hands are said to indicate, in a general way, the nature of their owner. The so-called "science of palmistry" is based on the inner lines of the hand, and the delicate curving lines of the finger-ends are now observed in prison studies for the identification of criminals. Yet few people know their own hands. This is because few people really understand the one condition of all knowledge, attention. Nevertheless, the hand is one of the most perfect and |