Speaker 1: Mental second wind. Are you an unusually persevering and persistent person, or,
like most of us, do you sometimes find it difficult
to stick to the job until it is done. What
is your usual experience in this respect? Is it not
this that you work steadily along until all of a
sudden you become conscious of a feeling of weariness, crying
enough for the time being, and then you yield to
the impulse to stop. Assuming that this is what generally happens,
does this feeling of fatigue, this impulse to rest, mean
that your mental energy is exhausted. Suppose that, by a
determined effort of the will, you force your lagging brain
to take up the thread of work. There will invariably
come a new supply of energy, a second wind, enabling
you to forge ahead with a freshness and vigor that
is surprising after the previous lassitude. Nor is this all
the same? Process may be repeated a second time and
a third time, each new effort of the will being
followed by a renewal of energy. Many a man will
tell you that he does his best work in the
wee watches of the morning, after tedious hours of persevering
but fruitless effort. Instead, of being exhausted by its long
hours a persistent endeavor, the mind seems now to rise
to the acme of its power to achieve its supreme accomplishments.
Difficulties melt into thin air, Profound problems find easy solution,
flights of genius manifest themselves. Yet long before midnight, such
a one had perhaps felt himself yield to fatigue, and
had tied a wet towel around his head, or had
taken stimulants to keep himself awake. The existence of this
reserved supply of energy is manifested and physical as well
as mental effort. Men who work with their heads and
men who work with their hands, Scholars and marathon runners
must alike testify to the existence of reserve supplies of
power not ordinarily drawn upon. If we do not always
or habitually utilize this reserve power, it is simply because
we have accustomed ourselves to yield at once to the
first strong feeling of fatigue. Evidence of this same fact
appears in our feelings on different days. How often does
a man get up from his breakfast table after a
long night's rest, when he should be feeling fresh and invigorated,
and say to himself, I don't feel like working to day,
and it may take him until afternoon to get his
work a day's stride, if indeed he reaches it at all.
You cannot, yourself be immune from the feeling on certain
days that you are not your best. Somehow or other,
your wits seem be fogged, visitate to undertake important interviews,
your interest lags, and though crises arise in your business,
you feel weighted down and unable to meet them with
that shrewd discernment and decisiveness of action of which you
know yourself capable. But you realize in your inmost self
that if you continue to exert the will and persistently
hold yourself to the business in hand, sooner or later
you will warm to the work. Enthusiasm will come, the
clouds will be dispelled, the husks will fly. Yet you
have had no rest. On the contrary, you have, by
continued conscious effort, consumed more and more of your vital energy. Obviously,
it was not rest that you needed. What you required
was the impulse of some strong desire that should carry
you over the threshold of that first inertia and to
the wide field of reserve energy. So rarely called pawn
and so rich in power. Under the lashings of necessity
or the spur of love or ambition, men accomplished feats
of mental and physical endurance of which they would have
supposed themselves incapable. Here is what a certain lawyer says
of his early struggles. When I was twenty three years old,
married and with a family to support, I entered the
law course of a great university. Of the many students
in my class, seven including me, were making a living
while studying law. By special arrangement, I was relieved from
attendance at lectures and simply required to pass examinations on
the various subjects, and was thus enabled to retain my
place as principal of a large public school. During the
third and last year of my law course, I was
principal of a public school of two thousand children and
an alternate night school with an enrollment of seven hundred fifty,
and I worked at the law three nights in the
week and all day Sunday. After eight months of this,
the final examinations came around. They consumed a full week
from nine in the morning until five or six at night.
I had no opportunity for review, so I rented a
room near the law school to save the time going
and coming, and reviewed each night the subjects of examination
for the following day. I did not sleep more than
two hours any night in that week. On Thursday, while
bolting a bit of a luncheon, a fishbone stuck in
my throat. Fearful of losing the result of my year's effort,
I returned to my work, suffering much pain, and kept
at it until Saturday night, when the examinations were concluded.
The next day, the surgeon who removed the fishbone said
there was no reason why I should have not had
a bad case of gangrene. When I look back on
that year's work, I don't see how I stood it.
I don't see how I kept myself at it day
in day out, month after month, without rest, recreation, or relief.
I am sure I could never go through it again,
even if I had the courage to undertake it. I
ranked second in a class of one hundred and eighty
in my law examinations, won the second prize for the
best graduating thesis, received a complimentary vote for class oratorship, and,
much to my surprise, was soon after offered an assistant
superintendency of the public schools by the school board, who
knew nothing of my studies and thought my work as
a teacher worthy of promotion. It was not only the
hardest year's work, but the best year's work I ever did.
It exemplifies my invariable experience that the more we want
to do, the more we can do, and the better
we can do it. The following is an extract from
a letter quoted by Professor James, as written by Colonel
Baird Smith after the Siege of Delhi in eighteen fifty seven,
to the success of which he largely contributed. My poor
wife had some reason to think that war and disease
between them had left very little of a husband to
take under nursing when she got him again. An attack
of scurvy had filled my mouth with sores, shaken every
joint in my body, and covered me all over with
scars and livid spots, so that I was unlovely to
look upon a smart knock on the ankle, joined from
the splinter of a shell that burst in my face
in itself, a mere bagtelle of a wound had been
of necessity neglected under the pressing and insistent calls upon
me and had grown worse and worse, until the whole
foot below the ankle became a black mass and seemed
to threaten mortification. I insisted, however, on being allowed to
use it until the place was taken mortification or no,
And though the pain was sometimes horrible, I carried my
point and kept up to the last. On the day
after the assault, I had an unlucky fall on some
bad ground, and it was an open question for a
day or two whether I hadn't broken my arm at
the elbow. Fortunately it turned out to be only a
severe sprain, but I am still conscious of the wretch
it gave me. To crown the whole pleasant catalog. I
was worn to a shadow by a constant diarrhea and
consumed as much opium as would have done credit to
my father in law, Thomas de Quincey. However, thank God,
I have a good share of tapolism in me and
come out strong under difficulties. I think I may confidently
say that no man ever saw me out of heart,
or ever heard a complaining word from me, Even when
our prospects were gloomiest. We were sadly crippled by cholora,
and it was almost appalling to me to find out
of twenty five officers I could only muster fifteen for
the operations of the attack. However, it was done, and
after it was done came the collapse. Don't be horrified
when I tell you that, for the whole of the
actual siege, and in truth, for some little time before,
I almost lived on brandy. Appetite for food, I had none,
and I forced myself to eat just sufficient to sustain life.
And I had an incessant craving for Brandy as the
strongest stimulant I could get. Strange to say, I was
quite unconscious of its affecting me in the slightest degree.
The excitement of the work was so great that no
lesser one seemed to have any chance against it. And
I certainly never found my intellect clearer or my nerves
stronger in my life. Such is the profound resourcefulness and
enduring power of a human mind.