made people either good or happy? Upon the contrary, people who pity themselves go
on pitying themselves even when they are laid softly on a cushion, but always in history
character and happiness have come to people in all sorts of circumstances, good, bad,
and indifferent, when they shouldered their personal responsibility. So, repeatedly the
north wind has made the Vikings."
Suppose we are so discouraged that we feel there is no hope of our ever being able to
turn our lemons into lemonade-then here are two reasons why we ought to try, anyway-
two reasons why we have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Reason one: We may succeed.
Reason two: Even if we don't succeed, the mere attempt to turn our minus into a plus
will cause us to look forward instead of backward; it will replace negative thoughts with
positive thoughts; it will release creative energy and spur us to get so busy that we won't
have either the time or the inclination to mourn over what is past and for ever gone.
Once when Ole Bull, the world-famous violinist, was giving a concert in Paris, the A
string on his violin suddenly snapped. But Ole Bull simply finished the melody on three
strings. "That is life," says Harry Emerson Fosdick, "to have your A string snap and
finish on three strings."
That is not only life. It is more than life. It is life triumphant!
If I had the power to do so, I would have these words of William Bolitho carved in eternal
bronze and hung in every schoolhouse in the land:
The most important thing in life is not to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that.
The really important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence; and it
makes the difference between a man of sense and a fool.
So, to cultivate a mental attitude that will bring us peace and happiness, let's do
something about Rule 6:
When fate hands us a lemon, let's try to make a lemonade.
Chapter 18: How To Cure Melancholy In Fourteen Days
When I started writing this book, I offered a two-hundred-dollar prize for the most helpful
and inspiring true story on "How I Conquered Worry".
The three judges for this contest were: Eddie Rickenbacker, president, Eastern Air
Lines; Dr. Stewart W. McClelland, president, Lincoln Memorial University; H. V.
Kaltenborn, radio news analyst. However, we received two stories so superb that the
judges found it impossible to choose between them. So we divided the prize. Here is
one of the stories that tied for first prize-the story of C.R. Burton (who works for Whizzer
Motor Sales of Missouri, Inc.), 1067 Commercial Street, Springfield, Missouri.
"I lost my mother when I was nine years old, and my father when I was twelve," Mr.
Burton wrote me. "My father was killed, but my mother simply walked out of the house
one day nineteen years ago; and I have never seen her since. Neither have I ever seen
my two little sisters that she took with her. She never even wrote me a letter until after
she had been gone seven years. My father was killed in an accident three years after