then
that purpose becomes a tyrant allowing no escape, even for a brief
pleasure, from its chains. Nothing is right that wastes any time;
nothing is good but the best. The sense of humor is conspicuously
lacking in this type, for one of the main functions of humor is to
season effort and straining purpose with proportion.

Should one of these unfortunates be a housewife, then she is continually
"picking up", continually pursuing that household Will-o'-the-Wisp,
"finishing the work." For it is the nature of housework that it is never
finished, no matter how much is done. This overconscientious person,
unless she is made of steel springs and resilient rubber, breathlessly
chasing this phantom all day and into the night, gives way under the
strain, even though she have a dozen servants to help. For to this type
each helper is not at all an aid. At once up goes the standard of what
is to be done, and each servant becomes an added care, an added
responsibility.

"I'd love to go out with you," wails this housewife, "but there's
something I must finish to-day." The word _must_, self-imposed, becomes
the mania of her life, to the open rebellion of her household. The word
drives her to the real neglect of her husband, who becomes irritated at
her constant and to him needless activity, coupled with her complaints.

"Why don't you rest if you are tired," is his stock remonstrance; "the
house looks all right to me."

But it is futile. She becomes irritated, perhaps cries and says, "Just
like a man. It's clean to you if there are no cobwebs on the walls."

Whereupon the debate closes, but the woman is the more deenergized and
the man exasperated at the unreasonableness of women in general and his
wife in particular.

It is probably true that woman has more conscience, in so far as detail
is concerned, than man. She is more of a lover of order and neatness,
more wedded to decorum. Man loves comfort and his interest is more
specialized and analytical, and as a rule he hates fussiness.

This hatred of fussiness makes him long for the masculine clubroom,
gives him the kind of uneasiness that sends him off on a fishing trip or
hunting expedition. Further, and this is of great social importance,
many a broken home, many an unexplainable triangle of the Wife, the
Husband, and the Other Woman owes its existence, not to the charms of
the other woman, but to the overconscientious wife.

The third type predisposed to the neurosis of