f serviceable to others is the simplest corrective.
Whatever else they may be, "eccentrics" are not generally serviceable.

Children of vivid imagination, nervously excitable and fragile in
constitution, rather easily fall into little eccentric ways which grow
very rapidly and are hard to overcome. One of the commonest of these is
talking to themselves. Sitting still, making efforts to apply their
minds to lessons for more than a short time, accentuates the tendency by
nerve fatigue. In reaction against fatigue the mind falls into a vacant
state and that is the best condition for the growth of eccentricities
and other mental troubles. If their attention is diverted from
themselves, and yet fixed with the less exhausting concentration which
belongs to manual work, this diversion into another channel, with its
accompany bodily movement, will restore the normal balance, and the
little eccentric pose will be forgotten; this is better than being
noticed and laughed at and formally corrected.

Manual employments, especially if varied, and household occupations
afford a great variety, give to children a sense of power in knowing
what to do in a number of circumstances; they take pleasure in this, for
it is a thing which they admire in others. Domestic occupations also
form in them a habit of decision, from the necessity of getting through
things which will not wait. For domestic duties do not allow of waiting
for a moment of inspiration or delaying until a mood of depression or
indifference has passed. They have a quiet, imperious way of commanding,
and an automatic system of punishing when they are neglected, which are
more convincing that exhortations. Perhaps in this particular point lies
their saving influence against nerves and moodiness and the
demoralization of "giving way." Those who have no obligations, whose
work will wait for their convenience, and who can if they please let
everything go for a time, are more easily broken down by trouble than
those whose household duties still have to be done, in the midst of
sorrow and trial. There is something in homely material duties which
heals and calms the mind and gives it power to come back to itself. And
in sudden calamities those who know how to make use of their hands do
not helplessly wring them, or make trouble worse by clinging to others
for support.

Again, circumstances sometimes arise in school life which make light
household duties an untold boon for particular