NewThoughtLibrary.com / DivineLibrary.org

The first man was a printer, who after hours spent much time in bowling, and who was looked upon as an expert in that game. He said that some time before he was playing a game, and at a critical point when he was taking aim and endeavoring to put the ball in between the 1 and 2 pins (a specially advantageous shot), his opponent spoke up and said "Just watch him hit the 4 pin." I do not know anything about bowling, but it seems that to hit the 4 pin is about the worst thing that can happen to a bowler, outside of missing the pins altogether. Well, to go on with the story, with the remark of his rival, Fearthought. entered the mind of the printer, and he couldn't get the 4 pin out of his mind. He kept on looking at the place he wanted to hit, but his mind was on the 4 pin, and he feared that he would hit it. To use his own words, he "got rattled," and away went the ball striking the 4 pin fair and square. He concluded the story by saying: "And so instead of making a 'ten strike' I got only a 'split.' " Maybe you understand those terms better than do I, but at any rate you will see what a Fearthought. brought to this typographical bowler in his little game of ten-pins. Moral: When you wish to place the ball Energy between the 1 and 2 pins of Life, don't allow Fearthoughts to switch you off to the 4 pin, thereby giving you a "split" instead of the coveted "ten-strike."

Another friend told me that, a few days before, he had been riding on the front bench of a grip-car on a Chicago cable-line. Hearing the gripman break into the vernacular in a vigorous style, he looked up, and saw a colored man on a bicycle trying to cross the track "on the bias," as the girls say, just ahead of the car. There was plenty of time --- plenty of room --- for the man to get across, but when he reached the middle of the track Fearthought got hold of him, and in spite of himself his wheel turned and he headed straight for the car. He headed straight for the gripcar, just as if he had aimed at it, and the next moment he went "bang 7 right into it. He escaped injury, but his wheel was wrecked. When asked about it, he said that from the moment he got afraid of the car his wheel "ran away with him," right into the thing he Feared. Moral: Keep your mind fixed on the thing you want --not on the thing you don't want.

Another man, to whom I related the story of the man on the wheel, said that he had the same trouble when he was learning to ride the wheel. He was getting along pretty well and could manage to steer half-way straight, although in a wobbly manner, until one day he happened to see a certain telegraph pole in front of the place where he was learning to ride. The pole seemed to hypnotize him, and from that day he couldn't keep his front wheel away from it. He couldn't keep away from that pole --- he was afraid of it. The pole seemed to have magnetic qualities and the result was "Bump." He remounted, over and over again, but the result was the same. At last he made up his mind that he was going to