Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 225, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1917 — When You Begin to Worry, Start Working Hard [ARTICLE]

When You Begin to Worry, Start Working Hard

By Harriet Culver

We’d like to fall asleep wme night and wake up next morning to find, either that the war clouds have lifted, or that we’ve merely awakened from a horrible nightmare and again have free use of our limbs and Scarcely a woman does one meet nowadays who does not eeenuim fear she is walking in her sleep and rapidly nearing a precipice over which she is soon to go hurtling to destruction, for war, its horrors, and its nearness now' to us all, is something the senses seem not able to comprehend in full entirety. And it’s for this very reason that women must occasionally pinch thoTrißftlvea and wake to the fact^thirt,rioihattferhowda3<kLihCyfwl^*o T how hopeless everything seems, the ordinary day’s activities must go on just as though nothing untoward was happening afar off on the smokewreathed continent overseas. There’s never been invented a better panacea for all the morbid fears that beset Yvomankind than good, wholesome work, work that must be done e’er the heavens fall, for jio one but a woman fully understands how easy it is to settle down into a state of hopeless apathy the moment something comes to sap one’s .nervous energy beyond a certain sane degree. But work cannot be done unless one keeps in proper physical condition. and this point is most insistent this time of year when summer heat brings with it summer lassitude. I just haven’t been able to eat a thing since John went away,” a frantic mother was telling a sympathising friend. “Every mouthful I take just chokes me.” Of course it does, but eating good food is just as impbrtant to the preservation of sanity these trying days as the selection of a good, hard job that must be filled and filled acceptably. Beefsteak is an expensive luxury, to be sure, but the heartening effect of the consumption of a good juicy beefsteak with a side dish of mashed potatoes and a vegetable or two, topped off with a cup of fragrant coffee and a delectable dessert, can never be fully appreciated until one has been away down in the dumps and wants something good and tonicky all in a hurry. Just try it and see. Even the war clouds lift a bit to show the clear blue sky above and beyond. No woman who wants to do her best bit for her country can afford to sit down and mope and fret and grow thin arid anaemic in the bargain. Try the tonic effects of work and good food and see how much brighter the world becomes right away.