We now reach the most important details concerning the keeping of the brain in activity and vigor. Having brought you to an understanding of the body, how to take care of it, of all that belongs at the start to make up a successful man, we must put ourselves in a position to know how to live and act so that throughout adult life and up to the age of many years, but not old age, we can get out of us all that is possible.

I speak of living many years, but not getting old. I mean exactly what I say. There is no reason why a man should be old at sixty, no, not at seventy. I do not imply that a man should be able to do the same amount of physical work at seventy that he can at thirty, but I do mean to say that all his mental forces should be under his control at seventy years of age, although he will naturally have to use them with care. A man who has not injured his brain forces should retain them up to the last moment of his life, but as he has not the repairing[139] powers of the younger man, he should be careful of the strain put upon them.

In this latter fact lies the only difference.

Having started well in your vocation, trade or profession, with your fine brain-tools edged to their best, you may now proceed to success or gradual failure. For, of course, just having the training and education does not mean that everything else comes along your way. Not a bit of it. In fact, you will find at first that the care of the working instruments you now have will take a good lot of self-control and the formation of certain necessary habits.

It all depends upon how you keep your brain-tools what your future will be. Whether you neglect them once in a while so that they have to be sharpened again, whether you leave them to rust and finally become useless, whether you lay them aside in good condition and take them up again in perfect order, all these matters go for success or failure. If it is only occasionally you neglect the brain-tools, you must remember that each new act of resharpening them leaves a less keen edge. Resting your brain, taking time to recuperate tired cells and enjoying some kind of sport or pleasure that is a benefit instead of an injury to your thoughts, is necessary for every man.

These brain-tools I have been speaking of are your powers of thinking correctly, creating,[140] doing, and the absolute integrity which must be retained between the impulses of the mind and the hands which respond to these impulses. The engineer, the auto driver, the mechanic, the draughtsman, the airman, the man who works in perilous heights while constructing tall buildings or bridges, must have perfect harmony throughout all his body—brain, muscles, eyes, ears. Let any one of these senses become unconsciously dull through neglect of right living, and the awful moment comes when an engineer sends a train to wreck with its innocent passengers, a tender pulls a lever a tenth of a second too soon and lets down the derrick’s load upon his fellow workers, or a chauffeur misses the turn by a few inches and sends the auto crashing over a precipice.

It is because these little matters of keeping the brain in its best condition by attending to details of living have not been thoroughly understood, that we have so many unaccountable accidents occurring every day. The knowledge of man’s forces and how they are controlled has not kept pace with his wonderful mechanical and electrical discoveries, so we have gone along with brain, instincts and training well enough for handling the plow and side-wheel steamboat, but not for the safe control of the delicate and powerful machines of to-day.

For example: a young man who runs an auto[141] goes one night to a dance where he breathes foul air, smokes and drinks a little beer. He returns late to his bed and rises early in the morning to take out the auto for a speedy spin. He knew the day before that he was to go with a party of children and women for an early drive. But what he did not know was that the foul air, tobacco and beer would surely make for less correct connection between his brain impulses and the response from his muscles, hands and arms.

Now all this little night’s pleasure, while harmless enough perhaps in its way and certainly harmless for a man who was to drive a hack the next morning, was injurious for one who needed every tenth of action between brain and hand under absolute control. There is coming a time when all these matters will be taught as well as the combustion parts of an engine.

In these details I am not referring to dissipation as it is generally considered. We accept without argument the injury such habits do—the certain ruin which follows drink and all that goes with that state. We take this auto driver whom we are using for an example, as a temperate man. And justly considered he is one, but nevertheless he has by this apparently harmless pleasure of one night, gone to work the next day with the fine edge off his brain-tools.[142] When the time comes for the most accurate judgment and an immediate response of hands to avoid the danger the brain sees, there is a part of a second in delay, and then the awful accident happens.

How did it happen? Those left alive cannot understand. The right thing was done at the right moment, so all think. The driver was a careful young man, of good habits, temperate, “never known to have been under the influence of drink, and always trustworthy.”

To-day is the day of the brain worker, and the man who lets the edge of his brain become dulled is a danger to himself and whatever he controls. And it is these little things which dull the brain; matters of such little importance in a man’s outward life that no one would suspect the direful results.

You can no longer do as your fathers used to do; we are living in a distinctly different age; we are daily dealing with powerful forces undreamed of in the past generation, and we must make ourselves ever ready to handle these forces.

There has been such a tremendous move in mechanical devices the last twenty years that this necessity of adapting our methods of living so as to safely accomplish the things our brains are called upon to do, has not been fully appreciated. Take the case of an engineer who has[143] been on duty for twenty-four hours. The old idea was that he simply became tired, that if he could keep his eyes open, everything would go all right. Now I have told you that fatigue produces a poison in the body; so here we see that when an engineer meets with an accident it was not due to merely being tired, but because his brain was being saturated with poisons, and when the moment came to act there could not be the ready response of hands or arms to avoid the accident.

But one class of men and women have known the absolute necessity of keeping the brain clear of poison. This class belongs to the professional circus people—trapeze performers, animal trainers, riders. These individuals live an ideally moral life. Not that they are any better than the rest of us, but because they know they have so to live in order to do their work. It is a very old profession, perhaps the oldest in the world, and experience, tradition, training and marrying into their own class—a very important factor—has brought about their unconscious acceptance of the physically pure life.

Undoubtedly after a generation or two in the use of our wonderful mechanical and electrical aids for easier living, we shall all be brought to the same method of grading our habits. Those who have not the mental vision to see this necessity will cease to enjoy the[144] world’s improvements. They will all become victims of their own stupidity or foolishness.

Not only does all this danger in dulling our brain-tools apply to the engineer, electrician, airman, auto driver and the hundreds of other active callings, but it applies also to the writer, painter, musician.

In these latter professions the danger is to the individual, but the result is the same—ruin in the end. The writer loses his force, his biting words; the painter shows a lack of his former color-tone, the musician finds that his latest work is severely criticised.

All these conditions may occur and yet the creator of brain output still remain an average man, not noticeably dissipated. In fact, he may live a strictly moral life, yet show in his prime a deterioration which neither he nor his friends can explain.

This fact brings us to the point of explaining the little and big factors which produce these causes of failure.

It is some little break in the connection between brain-cells that brings about the inability to think and act without effort. When a task is difficult to perform that is usually accomplished without difficulty, you may know that there is a temporary interruption somewhere in the tiny fibers and cells of the brain. Something has disturbed their normal action. It is[145] either fatigue poison, the poisons from overfeeding or underfeeding, effects of alcohol, tobacco, or the foul air you have taken into your system. Look into the matter and see what is the cause. It is the state brought about by some of these poisons which is at the bottom of all these lapses of full control of self and powers. The most frequent cause for this condition is due to two factors—external surroundings and mental absorption of injurious suggestions and sights.

The external surroundings are most frequently those of which the individual is not fully cognizant. That is, they are constantly at work doing their little injury day by day until they have finally made an impression upon the activity of the brain—dulled its keenness.

First of all these is the breathing of unfresh air. Not the noticeably bad air found in tenements, many shops and factories, but the air into which are thrown the emanations of thousands of all kinds and conditions of human bodies. No matter how well ventilated, theoretically, a big department store may be, the air one breathes in it is certain to contain poisons from well and diseased bodies. In most department and other large stores much attention is paid to ventilation, the best possible methods are used. But these stores cannot[146] regulate the personal hygiene of those thousands who enter.

The man who is in the habit of daily and nightly taking into his system nothing but fresh air cannot remain a half hour amid the surroundings of a crowded store without having a headache and a general feeling of sluggishness. Always having his brain free of poisonous substances, he rapidly becomes affected with the smallest amount. Living amid such atmospheric surroundings keeps the man and woman from doing their best. It is the same with the thousands of men who work in shops among hundreds of their kind; with the traveler who has to sleep in our microbe canisters, the sleeping cars; the theaters where continuous performances go on, and worse than all the commuter who twice a day takes in the poisons swarming in the smoking cars.

It is not necessary for me to enumerate all these unhealthful conditions we have to face every day of our lives. They are here and many of them cannot be changed as long as man and woman herd like sheep, one after the other, to the cities. Of course it would be an ideal state if before entering these large department stores, factories, etc., every man, woman and child was compelled to strip and have a hot bath and vigorous rub down. And this idea is not such an impossible one as you[147] might at first think. These very same conditions existed in Rome. There every man and woman took a hot bath before and after being in a crowd, whether it was shopping, in the Forum, or the amphitheater. There were baths for the poor, for the children and nurses, for the laborer as well as those magnificent ones for the rich and noble. But you see they were all Romans. I don’t think we should have much success in getting ALL of our citizens to bathe. In the hospitals, we doctors sometimes have to use a hose to get any effect upon a certain class of patients. I have seen thousands of men and women who wanted the doctor to give them “something to make them feel well” when plenty of soap and water was all they needed. And they were not the poor, the tramps and outcast, by any means.

I would go farther than the bathing before entering a crowded place. I would have them, after the shopping or factory work is over, pass through a system of breathing exercises in the open air—skin exposed—then allowed to go their way.

But practically, what can be done? Get out in the fresh air three or four times a day and take breathing exercises. No matter what the weather is, do this simple thing. At noontime there is always opportunity for ten or fifteen minutes of new life. Get it. No matter what[148] the weather is, always have your bedroom window open. Better let the snow and rain come in and spoil your carpet than allow the poisonous air expelled from your or other lungs to re-enter your system and dull your working capacity. Do not forget what I have already told you when speaking of athletic prowess—that the skin is, next to the lungs, our greatest breathing organ. Whenever possible, take an air bath—in your room when the sun shines, when you go bathing in the sea or swimming “in the ole swimmin’ hole.”

NEVER take “headache powders.” The habit of taking any kind of “nerve tonic,” digestive tablets, “harmless bracers,” will in the end put your brain-tools in poor shape. You have now the knowledge of what health means and how to keep it; if you will apply that knowledge with judgment you will be taking the best and only medicine man needs unless a destructive disease attacks you. And here is an important item; the ordinary diseases man is afflicted with will not get a hold upon the WELL youth.

I thoroughly appreciate the fact that all boys must have some kind of recreation. The working-boy needs it more than the schoolboy. You cease to be a healthy youth when you do not care for recreation, and fun, play and release at certain intervals from all kinds of work[149] is your birthright. But this recreation should be taken in fresh air and with proper companions. While speaking of fresh air I am reminded of several letters from boys sent to me after our last Chat. They asked about the same question: “If my father or mother died from consumption, is there any use of my fitting myself for a trade if I am to have consumption?”

We can settle this question in a very few decided words. No matter if your whole family died from consumption, it does not mean you will have consumption. Consumption is not a disease you can inherit. Now don’t forget this truth. But if you are born of consumptive parents it generally means that your parents did not know the curative value of fresh air. If you were kept in the same rooms where the germs of tuberculosis lived and thrived you ran big risks. But if you got away from these conditions as soon as you knew the danger, then, even if you have slight symptoms of the disease, you can be assured of a complete cure.

FRESH AIR DAY AND NIGHT, WITH NOURISHING FOOD AND PLENTY OF IT, WILL KEEP YOU FREE FROM CONSUMPTION. These conditions will cure you in the first stages.

It is very important, however, that the boy whose parents died from consumption should[150] not follow any trade or vocation which keeps him indoors during the growing period of his life. He never should take up any employment which means living in a dusty atmosphere, where metal filings are floating in the air. Keep out of button factories. The dust from the old bones used to make buttons and similar articles is apt to irritate the lungs, and when this condition is brought about the germs of consumption find a ready soil to breed in, and they do so.

You need have no fear of consumption if you follow the rule of keeping your lungs clean; fresh air is the broom for this kind of cleaning.

The curse of the public dance halls is not known to you all. I do not speak of the immoral conditions surrounding many of these places, but of the physical conditions. You cannot frequent these poorly-ventilated halls without having poisons circulated in your brains. If you are studying to perfect yourself in some vocatio............