Finally, when she finds that her ways do not annoy, she will stop them. She will probably, for a time at first, try harder to be disagreeable, and then after recovering from several surprises at not being able to annoy, she will quiet down and grow less disagreeable.
If we realize the effect of successive and continued resistance upon ourselves and realize at the same time that we can drop or hold those resistances as we choose to work to get free from them, or suffer and hold them, then we can appreciate the truth that if the woman at the next desk continues to annoy us, it is our fault entirely, and not hers.
CHAPTER XIV
Telephones and Telephoning
MOST men—and women—use more nervous force in speaking through the telephone than would be needed to keep them strong and healthy for years.
It is good to note that the more we keep in harmony with natural laws the more quiet we are forced to be.
Nature knows no strain. True science knows no strain. Therefore a strained high-pitched voice does not carry over the telephone wire as well as a low one.
If every woman using the telephone would remember this fact the good accomplished would be thricefold. She would save her own nervous energy. She would save the ears of the woman at the other end of the wire. She would make herself heard.
Patience, gentleness, firmness—a quiet concentration—all tell immeasurably over the telephone wire.