Girls and Women | Page 9

gratify
the appetite and take delight in food without further care; but if these
symptoms appear, think first whether you were too tired, or had too
busy a brain to digest anything; next, whether anything you ate was
unripe or underdone, and finally, whether there was anything in the bill
of fare which had ever troubled you before. Then correct your future
practice accordingly, and think no more about it. Depend upon it, you
will soon be well, and, further, you will find, with mortification
perhaps, that some of the headaches you thought came from overtaxing
the brain, or from sensibility to the woes of the world, were really due
to improper food. As compensation for your mortification you will be a
more useful woman for your whole life.
Work regularly with both body and mind.
Those who must work for self-support are probably, on the whole, in
better health than those who are free from necessity. A girl who stands
all day behind a counter runs some risks in health, but her chances are
still as good as those of the fine lady who broods over imaginary
ailments till they become real. To those who must work I have but little
to say, for they have a narrow margin of choice. There are several
suggestions to be made, however. If your work is physical, use a little

of your leisure every day in some mental occupation. The best thing is
to do some real studying. If you can only spend fifteen minutes every
day on history or literature or botany or French, you will find yourself
the better for it bodily, because it will give you an outlook beyond the
daily horizon, and take your thoughts from your own weariness. If you
have no leisure, or if your work is so exhausting that even fifteen
minutes of study seems burdensome, then keep some interesting novel
of good tone at hand, and read a little in that every day to change the
current of your thoughts. If you find, however, that you usually have
more than an hour for your novel, you may suspect that fifteen minutes
of study would not hurt you.
Do you know that you are never resting when you are thinking that you
are tired? When you are tired rest at once, if you can, by sitting or lying
down, or taking recreation, as experience has shown you to be best. But
then think no more about it. Perhaps you may be overworking. If you
truly believe this and see any possibility of saving yourself, do so, even
if you have to give up something which seems particularly important. If
you must overwork,--and there are such cases, though they are not so
common as we think,--accept the condition as a part of the discipline of
life, rest whenever you can, and say and think as little about it as you
can. This advice is to save you from one form of the nervous diseases
which are the peculiar misfortune of our time.
If your work is sedentary take physical exercise in your leisure
time,--out of doors, if possible; but remember that housework is the
best substitute for that.
The women who are not obliged to work are those who most need this
precept. They can drive, and by and by they cannot walk. They can lie
on the lounge when they feel indisposed, and they lie there long after
they would get up if they had any work to do. They have the best
chance for complete physical development, but they have great
temptations to neglect their opportunities. Among the sweetest of such
women there is an alarming amount of nervous disease, which is, alas!
at the foundation a refined selfishness. To speak plainly, as one has said,
we are all as lazy as we dare to be, and these women have no check

upon laziness. No power of body or mind can be preserved without
exercise, and the muscles grow soft, and the moral fibre grows weak.
These women are lovely, they speak in gentle voices, and they never
use a harsh word, but they rule all about them with a rod of iron. Dr.
Weir Mitchell, in his blunt way, says that nervous diseases among
women have destroyed the happiness of more families than
intemperance.
By and by the invalid cannot rally even if she has the will, but it is hard
to decide where responsibility ends. If your mothers or your aunts are
nervous invalids, do not judge them. Causes may have been at work
which you cannot see. Pity their terrible misfortune, and do all you can
to make them happy. But you, who have the added light of another
generation, are inexcusable if you fall into such a state.
How can you avoid