CONSERVATION OF HUMAN ENERGY. 409 



largely deviate shape and carriage. Lack of variety in movements due 

 to repetition of laborious acts exerts a modifying influence, usually for 

 harm. It is not the effects of fatigue on the entire organism, but 

 rather continued repetitions of movements by which the one part 

 most exercised adjusts itself along the lines of least resistance to do 

 its work most comfortably, which produces a warping of the unused 

 complemental part. And finally the most potent agency of all in pro- 

 ducing awkwardness and tension is exaggerated hyperconsciousness. 



By far the largest proportion of those peculiarities of gait and car- 

 riage which are noticed in almost every one, although they may begin 

 primarily in some structural peculiarity and are modified by dress and 

 occupation, nevertheless are exaggerated enormously by this over-con- 

 sciousness which affects somewhat every one. It will be plain to those 

 who will reflect for a moment how differently they will walk and act 

 in the privacy of their own rooms or among their families and friends 

 from that which they will present if called upon to exhibit themselves 

 in some public position. Let any one remember the time when first 

 called to walk the floor of a crowded room while for a moment the 

 cynosure of a large number of watchful and presumably critical eyes. 

 Here the hyperconsciousness may become so marked as to produce in 

 some a mental agony, which will be vividly reflected as a rule in sup- 

 pressed writhings or contortions. This effect upon the body may not 

 be outwardly shown to any marked extent, but an irregularity of 

 tension is produced in the various parts which distinctly mars their 

 natural ease of action or attitude. 



Many of the deformities which come upon women are not recog- 

 nized by them as such, and yet to the critical eye they are departures 

 from the normal lines of development, and the results of habitually 

 faulty attitudes, not present in youth. They need not have been 

 acquired except through the artificial restraints of custom and a desire 

 to conform to conventional poses. Such are the stiff or awkward and 

 certain hyperconscious positions assumed by a lady when arrayed for 

 display in public; witness the indrawn elbows, the contractured hands, 

 either clutching a portion of her dress or a pocketbook, or both. It is 

 apparently against the canons of taste to permit any freedom of motion, 

 either at elbow or at shoulder. The gait becomes a constrained strut, 

 because it is practically impossible to allow the thighs to move with 

 naturalness and ease. In mobile adolescents, this is not so offensive to 

 the observer, but as age creeps on and youthful elasticity is gratui- 

 tously sacrificed, as well as rapidly lost from senile changes added to 

 disuse, the picture presented of an elderly woman parading the thor- 

 oughfares is too often a repulsive one. On the other hand, if she ceases 

 striving to make a good appearance and abandons herself to indolent 

 attitudes, to droop and slouch, the spectacle is even worse. This unfor- 



