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                                                Brave conquerors! For so you are
                                                Who war against your own affections
                                                And the huge army of the world's desires,
                                                                                       -Shakespeare.

         We of  today recognize the great English playwright's genius, but what was taken for wisdom in his day we've found to be false in ours.
         We know now that war in any form has never solved a human problem.  We know that to declare a state of war between us and our desires does not eradicate those desires, but rather intensifies them in proportion as our war-like wills appear victorious and strong.
         When I came out of the dungeon and had again resumed my routine duties, I was in possession of an idea that had worked a seeming miracle in my behalf. But while I had a recognition of this idea, I did not have the sense of illumination, the feeling of ecstasy that had been born to me as a result of it there. Too, although I realized the idea to be a medium through which I could contact creative power, I didn't know how to go about applying the medium to my problems now.
         These problems were many and life-long duration. They began immediately to present themselves to me for consideration the same day I had my release from punishment; for that day there was established in me an intense desire for a new deal of livingness.
         Therefore, I sat down one evening to list my mental, moral and physical assets and liabilities. I discovered that I had shelter, food and clothing, such as they were. I was able to read, write and cipher a little. Against these things the list of my liabilities ran into interminable lengths.
         The  problem appeared simple under such circumstances. I would simply start from scratch, and declare war on my physical ill health, replace my negative attitude with a positive attitude, substitute optimism for pessimism, and presto, all would be hunky-dory.
         The thoughtful reader, however, will see that I had set a mighty big order for myself. In fact, what I desired to accomplish meant a complete right-about-face from all the destructive habits I had acquired and nurtured through the years. My intention was to go to war against them and slay them in one fell blow with the rapier of my will. My intentions were excellent; however, I hadn't reckoned on the strength of the enemy. My effort, though heroic, was short-lived and ended in dismal and mind-tormenting failure.
         The more I tried to war against my habits, the more persistently they pressed their claims upon me. I grew melancholy under the strain. A sense of weakness and hopelessness took hold of me, which defied constructive thinking, which defied thinking of any kind, except thoughts of impotence and misery.
         The desire for the things I had lived became more and more intense, until reason warned me that a compromise would have to be made, and compromise was the first step to failure. From it the plunge back down would be swift and certain.
         But the worst of all, my health instead of improving under the ordeal,  took an opposite turn. I soon learned that willpower was one thing, and that to use it constructively against life-long habits was another.
         It seemed that all the legions of hell had turned out to concentrate their fire upon me alone. If I decided to miss a meal out of regard for my health, that particular meal would be certain to contain seldom-served items that I especially liked. Every time I picked up a magazine  or newspaper, I would be sure to find some brilliant, logical attack up on the virtues I had set before me. Things occurred that I had never known to occur before to test my resolve. For instance, I had been an inveterate user of profanity. And being profane, I had not noticed it being used by others so much. But no sooner had I resolved to stop its use, I began to notice that every one seemed to use it. Books that contained it were thrust in my way. An essay by a popular author on the use of profanity was given to me. The author argued that those who did not curse had no strength of character. Men who couldn't say damn once in a while had lost all claim to masculinity. They were unpardonable sissies; and he clinched his argument with a long list of leaders in American history, including the father of his country, who had cursed their way to fame and victory over insurmountable odds. Profanity was a vigorous mode of expression that fitted perfectly into all occasions requiring force and vigor.
         I had a habit of chewing tobacco, which, for me in prison, had been an expensive one to gratify. To obtain chewing tobacco had been a constant struggle. But now that I had resolved to give the habit up, the weed was forced upon me from all manner of sources without one single effort on my part to acquire it.
         My strongest mental habit had been intolerance of other persons' opinions, which had, all my life, kept me in hot water, fights and squabbles. Of course, this habit headed my list. I determined I would look at the other fellow's viewpoint and respect it even if I couldn't agree with it. I would refuse to argue with anyone, taking the stand that fools argued and wise men discussed. But again this good intention was easier resolved than carried out. It seemed that those with whom I came in contact would be pacified with nothing short of hot words. And the more I tried to force my resolution by sheer will-power the more easily irritated I seemed to become.
         I had always thought I possessed courage. I had no fear of physical pain. I had been clubbed by policemen into states of insensibility. I had faced death many times while pulling off burglaries; I would fight any man at the drop of a hat. Then one day, after I had made my resolution to be broad and tolerant, a fellow told me I was yellow; that I didn't know what courage was. I was on my feet in an instant. But I steeled myself, gulped down the old impulse to do battle, and listened while he brutally continued his accusation.
         "I'll tell you what courage is," he said. "You've never known what the word meant. Everybody in this joint knows you've always been hard-boiled. You've preached tooth and fang sermons around here for years. Now you've decided you were all  wet and wrong. You've gone wishy-washy. All right, if you've got courage you'll go up on the chapel platform the next day we have open forum and tell all your old friends all about it. Preach us a sermon about your grand and glorious reformation. That'll take the kind of courage you ain't got."
         Strangely enough I hadn't thought of that particular kind of courage before. But now I realized that bullets and blackjacks were easier to face than the ridicule of one's cynical fellows en masse. As I pondered on such a predicament, I could visualize an audience of sneering faces; I could hear their cat-calls and boos ; their hisses, and their innuendoes of turn-tail, yaller-cur, long-tailed rat, and a hundred other savage aspersions.
         I didn't have the courage to face a thing of this kind, but I forced my will to accept the challenge. I made a prepared talk and committed it to memory. Then I sent my name and desire to the open forum director. I lived a million years of emotional agony between that day and the day I was billed to speak. When the day finally came I was almost a complete invalid. As I sat on the platform trying to pretend poise as the lines filed into the auditorium, the pit of my stomach was churning like a ball of red-hot vacuum without a mooring. As I was being introduced, a wave of nausea swept over me and I began to tremble from head to feet. As I rose, I was met with a roar of ridicule; tide after tide of it broke over me as I stood there waiting for it to subside. I felt as though I was losing consciousness. Then came a dead hush, in which I imagined one might hear a feather fall above the mad pumping of my heart. I started out to speak; my lips quivered open, but not a syllable issued forth. If ever self styled hero made an inglorious retreat that hero was me. I slunk from the auditorium amid the wildest surge of abuse I've ever heard before or since. Right there and then I decided to scuttle all my fine resolutions. But Providence once more came to my rescue, this time in a wholly different manner.
         I was to occupy that same platform many times after this frightful fizzle. I was to debate my newfound philosophy of behavior with some of the most brilliant forum minds. I was to hear cheers and applause, where I had once heard only sneers and guffaws. But I didn't achieve these things by the war process against my habits and weaknesses. I achieved then not by trying  new habits that transcended the old. To war against a thing is to hate that thing. To sublimate a condition is to employ the medium of love. The one compresses the condition into a more intensified circumference, the other expands it until it has no circumference left.
         It so happened, and how fortunate it was for me, that just after I reached this crisis, I was transferred to a different cell! The man with whom I was to share this latter cell was a life-termer well along in years.
         His name was Dad Trueblood, but he was often referred to as The Old Stir Bug. Ordinarily this name was applied in an uncharitable sense to those prisoners who had attracted it through odd or queer quirks in their mental characters. But in the case of Dad Trueblood it was untouched by the critical or opprobrious. For this old fellow was the most beloved man who had ever done time in this particular prison. He was loved by both prisoners and officials alike, a combination rarely found behind stone walls.
         Dad was one of those exceptional persons the most chary could trust; one of those singular individuals who, without uttering a word, broke down the strongest restraint in others and set them to blabbing their troubles in his ear as naively as a child goes running with its troubles to its mother. He was one of those occasional men who could win another's confidence without effort, and with just as little effort keep that confidence strictly inviolable.
         Had Dad wished to turn informer, he could have sent scores of his confidants to longer prison terms, and many to the electric chair. But Dad was not an informer, and although this prison, like all other prisons, was managed after the stool-pigeon system, no official ever thought of offending Dad's sensibilities by offering him special privileges in return for tainted favors.
         The odd twist that gave Dad the name Stir Bug occurred because he had refused a pardon after having served twenty-seven years. His reason for such an unheard-of act was strange and yet wholly consistent with his character. When the warden asked him why he preferred to remain voluntarily in prison, he said that he was getting old; that he no longer had any friends or relatives on the outside; and that he thought he could be of more service in prison than out.
         "But don't you want your freedom?" the warden had asked incredulously.
        "I'm always free,'' the old lifer had replied. "It doesn't make any difference where you are on the face of the earth, warden. If your thoughts are free you're free. And there's no one can imprison your thoughts but yourself."
         And so Dad Trueblood had been permitted the privilege of remaining a number instead of going out and once more becoming a name.
         When I moved my belongings into his cell he was lying on his bunk. He welcomed me casually in a friendly manner. He knew, of course, of my reputation as a bad actor. There were few words passed between us until we had been locked in for the evening. Then I asked him if he dad seen my fade-away in the chapel. Yes, he had been there that day. He thought most any one else would hade done likewise under similar circumstances. But he asked no curious questions about it.
         Finally, I related my experience in the dungeon; and of my desires after coming out; of terrific willpower battle to overcome my old habits; of my pitiful failure to do anything in that direction. "But after that chapel deal," I finished, "I got wise to myself in a jiffy."
         "How do you mean?" he asked in an off-hand way.
         "I mean this virtue stuff  is all the bunk," I said.
         "Then what does that make the other stuff? The stuff you've been living before ?"
         "There are some pretty wise men who have taken the gold out of the Golden Rule, and have made that rule look pretty small, at least on paper," I replied evasively.
         "That doesn't seem important, son, in your case," Dad said. "You've been following another rule. The important thing is, what has it got you? Critics and logicians deal with the trees in a forest, without ever seeing the forest itself. That's what you should be looking at now -- not the too logical details, not what the other fellow has done with your old philosophy, but what you have done with it. If you're satisfied with the results, then your rule has worked out, if not, then the sensible thing to do is to stick to your guns and try another way."
         But I've tried that and failed," I said hopelessly.
         "No, you haven't," he said, "you've just gone at it wrong. For instance, if you wanted to become a cannibal right quick, where before you'd only been a moderate eater of meat, why just force yourself to break off with meat by using your will and nothing else. No, son, the easiest and safest way to rid yourself of many bad habits is to recondition yourself to one good habit. Once you have it established, the others will have disappeared without much strain."
         What he did was to show me how to apply the idea I had discovered in solitary confinement, or rather the idea that had been discovered for me, and turned to my account in spite of me.
        First I was to forget all about my notion of going to war with my habits. I was just to assume that nothing had happened to me; that my attitude was the same as it had always been; that I was not to make any attempt to force a change in my custom of living; but that whenever and wherever I could do it without strain or pressure, to do something constructively creative; a quiet thought, an encouraging word to some one at the right time, a stimulating hint to another, a constructive action, either selfish or unselfish.
         I was to read, as I had always read, books that appealed to the negative side of my life. But as I read I was to try to build in something positive between the lines, whenever I could appear to do it without too much labor.
         "Make it a game, son," he said, "and not a task. Let it be a challenge but not a command."
         Guided safely by the unerring knowledge Dad had of sublimation, I entered into the spirit of the game and found it not only profitable but pleasurable. It was accepted as a novelty, a plaything, something, with which to while away the time; and the joy of which depended upon the game itself, and not upon the results to be accomplished.
         During the day at my machine I made a game of sewing garments. Each one I finished had in it an effort to make it better than its predecessor. This part of the game alone relieved me entirely of the burden my labor had always had for me before. As a I continued to play it, I soon found it becoming a fascinating habit. Time that had always dragged heavily with each begrudging stitch, now flew by on wings of tirelessness. I won privileges on my workmanship, and many compliments from the superintendent of the shop. But the surprising thing about it all was that I not only made better garments, but I was able to complete my task in much less time than when I had been fighting the sewing machine every minute and turning out slipshod material; where I had been constantly jerking at my cloth and breaking my thread, thus wasting time rethreading my needle, I now worked more smoothly and consequently with little lost motion. One of my best games was to see how many completed garments I could make without an accidental breaking of my thread. On several occasions I finished the whole task, twelve garments, without a mishap.
         This game was taken up by those around me, and eventually spread over the entire shop. The superintendent was amazed at the results. He made it a competitive game and offered prizes for the winners. Not only were the garments made better; but there was a great saving accomplished by eliminating wastage, garments too hastily thrown together that later had to be discarded and new ones made to replace them.
         And all the while I would be working away at my task, I also played a game with my thoughts. I would analyze them as they drifted through my mind. I would label each as it came along. If it was destructive, I would counter with a constructive one deliberately created for the purpose, and vice versa. As I continued to play, I soon became conscious of a subtle, but definite drawing away of the destructive thoughts. The constructive ones came more and more unbidden, until finally I was aware that whole sequences of them would pass through my mind without being broken by one negation. Too, I found it becoming increasingly repugnant to deliberately create a destructive thought to carry out my game of counter-action.
         Then when my task had been completed, I hatched up another game. I called it the game of constructive deeds. Each day I tried to increase the number of little unobtrusive things I could do for my fellows. I would hold loving thoughts toward men who had always been my avowed enemies. Many of them I had bloody encounters with and hadn't spoken to since. Without fitting any other action to these thoughts, I watched and waited, and in every case was rewarded by seeing the iceberg melt that had stood between us, and it wasn't long until I had no enemies left.
         This game by itself did something psychic to me. I didn't know what it was at the time. But it was an expanding something that drew men closer to me, even while I drew farther away from the life or the type of livingness they stood for. I didn't know why men distrusted the pious and self righteous sort of comradeship and fellowship; nor exactly what the difference was between that sort and the sort that I was expressing; but I knew there was a difference because the results were different. What that difference was didn't seem to matter. I was becoming more and more result-conscious, and this in itself was an excellent sign.
         And then at night in my cell I would take up a book that I had always looked upon as my Bible. It was Schopenhauer's Studies in Pessimism. With this book I now made another fascinating game. I went through it thought for thought, translating it in long-hand on pieces of wrapping paper. My translation of the title was Studies In Positiveness. For each negative thought given by the author, I wrote down its best positive opposite.
         Nor did one of the author's negations defy translation, indeed I invariably found many positive thoughts in one of his negative ones, from which I would choose the strongest. Sometimes it took me an entire evening to get over one page; other times I would do as many as five pages. Only once did I ask Dad to help me, and then he shook his wise old head.
         "Solitaire is a one man game," he said, "and you're doing fine. Keep right after it until  you win on your own efforts."
         That enormous bundle of manuscript was destroyed. I've often wished I had preserved it. There was a certain sentiment attached to it, I suppose. It was something tangible that stood for something much greater, though intangible, the beginning of a slow but steady bulge upward. But after all, though the manuscript was destroyed, its effect on me is still alive and will remain so until the end of my days. The effects of constructive building are eternal: destructive building leads to limitation and death. But of all my early games with the implements of life, I believe this one, in its cumulative results, had the greatest influence  for good.

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