How to Release Stored-Up Energies
"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 day school of two thousand children and an alternate night school with an enrolment of seven hundred and fifty, and I worked at the law three nights in the week and all day Sunday.
The Lawyer Who "Overworks"
"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 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 not have 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.