Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/34

 all that experience, insight, and understanding can provide are required by his friends so that they can appreciate the reasons for his otherwise inexplicable behavior, and make the necessary allowances for it. This is particularly true when the man is not confined to his bed, but is suffering one of the minor and less apparent chronic illnesses. Wherever sickness appears, it brings new and unforeseen problems. There are few things that more quickly precipitate the true character of an individual and his friends.

Work is one of the most important of adjustments because it is chief among the mediums through which a man expresses his personality. Let Colas Breugnon describe it:

"There is one old chum that never goes back on me, my other self, my friend—my work. How good it is to stand before the bench with a tool in my hand and then saw and cut, plane, shave, carve, put in a peg, file, twist and turn the strong fine stuff, which resists yet yields—soft smooth walnut, as soft to my fingers as fairy flesh; the rosy bodies or brown limbs of our wood-nymphs which the hatchet has stripped of their robe. There is no pleasure like the accurate hand, the clever big fingers which can turn out the most