Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/247

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majority of people live their lives through without even securing for their homes the kind of dwelling that would give them the environment they desire—no matter how modest their wants in this direction may be. Yet, in spite of these and many other handicaps, men attain to happiness, attain to it out of the barest of equipments and with the least of facilities.

No one who has watched the making of such an adjustment as the adjustment to tuberculosis, can fail to wonder at the marvels of which the average human being is capable. To realize the eternal watchfulness that is the means by which the consumptive wins the mastery of his life; to sense the steadfastness of purpose, the control of self, and the persistence which the living of a regularized existence involves; to appreciate what the foregoing of physical recreation and the limitation to his hours of activity mean; to realize all this and then to see men find contentment in spite of their disease, is to know that man can adjust himself to anything.

The more one works with people in trouble, the greater his confidence in human kind and his respect for human beings becomes. Seeing what they accomplish in overcoming their difficulties