way, and brandishes his little arms about, as if his mother
were offering him something bitter. Then, finally, when his mother
succeeds in getting him to open his mouth and take the food it makes
you smile all over to see the contrast: he looks so quiet and
contented, and you can see his whole little body expand with
satisfaction.

It is just the same inherited tendency in a nervous woman that makes
her either consciously or unconsciously fight exercise and fresh air,
fight good food and eating it rightly, fight everything that is
wholesome and strengthening and quieting to her nerves, and cling with
painful tenacity to everything that is contracting and weakening, and
productive of chronic strain.

There is another thing that a woman fights: she fights rest. Who has
not seen a tired woman work harder and harder, when she was tired,
until she has worn herself to a state of nervous irritability and
finally has to succumb for want of strength? Who has not seen this same
tired woman, the moment she gets back a little grain of strength, use
it up again at once instead of waiting until she had paid back her
principal and could use only the interest of her strength while keeping
a good balance in reserve?

"I wish my mother would not do so many unnecessary things," said an
anxious daughter.

A few days after this the mother came in tired, and, with a fagged look
on her face and a fagged tone in her voice, said: "Before I sit down I
must go and see poor Mrs. Robinson. I have just heard that she has been
taken ill with nervous prostration. Poor thing! Why couldn't she have
taken care of herself?"

"But, mother," her daughter answered, "I have been to see Mrs.
Robinson, and taken her some flowers, and told her how sorry you would
be to hear that she was ill."

"My dear," said the fagged mother with a slight tone of irritation in
her voice, "that was very good of you, but of course that was not my
going, and if I should let to-day pass without going to see her, when I
have just heard of her illness, it would be unfriendly and unneighborly
and I should not forgive myself."

"But, mother, you are tired; you do need to rest so much."

"My dear," said the mother with an air of conscious virtue, "I am never
too tired to do a neighborly kindness."

When she left the house her daughter burst into tears and let out the
strain which had been accumulating for weeks.

Finally, when she had let down enough to feel a relief, a fu