SERENITY
New York Tribune, January 21, 1905
In these days, when, it would appear, the striving for wealth, influence, and position has never been so great, the simple life, a term suggestive of rest and contentment, is indeed worth contemplating. It looms up on our horizon as a "far-off, divine event"—but how attain it? How rid ourselves of the endless struggle, with its consequent exhaustion, involved by our complex mode of life?
It seems to me that the root of the matter lies not in the too great number and variety of our duties and interests, but in our own physical defects. In a word, the average woman is so nervous that one day of the longed-for simple life, devoid of the excitement which she unconsciously craves, would be the proverbial last straw that would annihilate her. We must therefore endeavor to change our mental attitude—the attitude that makes of writing a friendly note a mad scramble with a pen; that makes of a short call a high-pitched flow of words with one eye on the clock; that makes of an errand a dash for a car, with distraction written on every feature.
This high state of tension, from which so many of us suffer, is often erroneously characterized as energy, indus-
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