Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 235, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 October 1918 — LEARN FINE ART OF RESTING [ARTICLE]

LEARN FINE ART OF RESTING

Ability to Do and Work Depends on One's Knowing Just How to Spend ' ■ - ' Leisure Time. Rest is a blessing laid up COT the tired only, not for the pleasure -seeker. It i*a relaxation from toil, ndt a new thrill for the bored. It is not a pickle following a feast of cake, nor is it within reach of the lazy. It is a gift, for the sole use and behoof of him who has toiled. No one. reaches the door leading to rest without first passing through the workroom. Most tired folk have wasted much good strength, but this folly does not bar them from entering into the house of rest If all lived wisely there would be need of few hospitals, and if only those who labored wisely rested there would be no rest for the race this side of the cemetery.

“Stonewall’* Jackson, whose army corps was swift of foot used to say: “I like to see my men lie flat on their backs. A man rests more that way.” That is the primitive way of resting. Mother Earth has a broad lap and a restful way Of holding her children. A wise physician, when sending a patient on his summer vacation recently, said: “On your drive don’t try to get anywhere. Any place is a good place to stop, if you stop before you are tired. Don’t try to cover any prescribed distance in one day. Don’t make or keep any engagements. Be criminally lazy. Avoid folks. Fish. When tired of fishing, lie down under a tree and look up. If you fall asleep, sleep. When you wake up, fish some more. Forget that you ever lived before that one day.” The ability of a man to fill his mind full of one day depends on his having trained himself to see things out of doors, to fill himself with the immediate pleasaint present without having to draw on the unpleasant past Hippy is that man who can get 14 days of rest out of a two weeks’ vacation. The ability to live well the remainder of the year may lie wholly in knowing how to occupy those two weeks, for if one learns on this summer outing that the art of resting includes the fine art of forgetting, he may practice the same art throughout the year at home in his little rest spells. What a man brings out of the rest room depends largely bn whether or not, when going in, he remembered to shut the door behind him.