arefully.
Photography is easy. A cheap outfit will make excellent postcards, modern
methods having got rid of the dark room and much of the mess, and
postcard-size prints can be pasted on various attractive mounts.
If the work is done slowly, and in a good light, and the patient has an
aptitude for it, ticket-writing is pleasant. Among small shopkeepers there
is a constant demand for good, plainly printed tickets at a reasonable
price.
On an allotment near home vegetables and poultry might be raised, an
important contribution to the household, and one which removes the stigma
of being a non-earner.
The mental discipline furnished by this home-work is invaluable,
Neuropaths, especially if untrained, are unable to concentrate their
attention on any matter for long, and do their work hastily to get it
finished. When they find that to sell the work it must be done slowly and
perfectly they have made a great advance towards training their minds to
concentrate. Their weak inhibitory power is thus strengthened with happy
results all round.
When the work and the weather permit, work should be done outdoors, and
when done indoors windows should be opened, and, if possible, an empty or
sparsely-furnished bedroom chosen for the work.
Recreations. These offer a freer choice, but those causing fatigue or
excitement must be avoided, for patients who have no energy to waste need
only fresh air and quiet exercise.
Manual are better than mental relaxations. Dancing is unsuitable, swimming
dangerous, athletics too tiring and exciting. Bowls, croquet, golf,
walking, quoits, billiards, parlour games and quiet gymnastics without
apparatus are good, if played in moderation and much more gently than
normal people play them. Play is recreation only so long as a pastime is
not turned into a business. When a player is annoyed at losing, though he
loses naught save his own temper, any game has ceased to be recreative.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXIV
HEREDITY
"Man is composed of characters derived from pre-existing germ-cells,
over which he has no control. Be they good, bad, or indifferent, these
factors are his from his ancestry; the possession of them is to him a
matter of neither blame nor praise, but of necessity. They are
inevitable."--Leighton.
The body is composed of myriads of cells of _protoplasm_, in each of which,
is a _nucleus_ which contains the factors of the heredi
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