EMOTIONS VERSUS HEALTH IN WOMEN. 509 



the individual exciting the complex emotions of anxiety, xcorry, are 

 largely responsible for inducing this affection. We believe, indeed, 

 that hard work, unaccompanied by emotional excitement, seldom in- 

 jures either man or woman. It is the man who, in addition to close ap- 

 plication to work, is harrassed by fears of poverty, of loss of position, 

 of anxieties for himself or his family, and the woman who bears the 

 burden of domestic cares, of private griefs, or sustains the strain of a 

 complex social system, who suffers from nervous exhaustion, not the 

 hard-working mechanic, or the unemotional washer-woman. The ex- 

 perience of every school-girl testifies that mental anxiety produces a 

 degree of physical exhaustion out of all proportion to the muscular 

 work effected. The agitations of school politics, the over-emotional 

 character often infused into school-girl friendships, the fears of failure 

 and kindred commotions result in more physical weariness than hours 

 of calm, steady work in the laboratory or in the class-room. 



A college graduate confesses that one of the most exhausting ex- 

 periences of her college life was a morning spent in absolute physical 

 inactivity in a student's meeting, but in a state of mental commotion 

 impossible to describe, over an absorbing issue in college politics. 

 "After four hours of that experience," she said, "I was fit for bed, 

 and for nothing else." It requires no great ingenuity to suggest that 

 this tendency in the training of woman which affects her mental and 

 physical health, may be met by remedies addressed to body and mind 

 alike. The education which shall discipline, not eradicate, the emotional 

 susceptibility of women must begin where the gentility of Dr. Holmes's 

 ideal gentleman began, with our great-grandmothers. 



Heredity may not be able to shoulder all of the sins of mankind, 

 but, at least, it must bear its share. The coming woman must not 

 only be well-born, she must be bred in more hygienic methods. She 

 must not only possess inherited vigor, she must also be educated nearer 

 to Xature. The genuine child of Nature is not a morbidly emotional 

 child. The girl who lives in the open air, who knows every bird and 

 flower and brook in the neighborhood, has neither time nor inclina- 

 tion to spend in reading the sentimental histories of departed child- 

 saints, and takes small delight in morbid conversation. 



Out-of-door life has never been made popular or interesting for 

 little girls as it always has been for boys. Girls will voluntarily seek 

 fresh air and sunshine if they appreciate the delightful occupations 

 as well as \hQ.fun to be found in it. They are quite right in "hating 

 to go out because there is nothing to do." Open wide to them the 

 fascinating book of Nature ; let them read the story of bird-life and 

 animal-life, and find their first hints of the wonders of plants and 

 rocks by sunlight, and at first hand, not from a printed page in 

 unventilated libraries. Then, when out-of-door life and out-of-door 

 sports have been made as attractive and popular for girls as for boys, 

 and when they have accepted the creed that a nobly-developed and 



