re in such exquisite sympathy that they constantly act and react on
each other. It is always easier to relax superfluous tension after
lowering the voice.

"Take the bone and flesh sound from your voice" is a simple and
interesting direction. It means do not push so hard with your body and
so interfere with the expression of your soul. Thumping on a piano, or
hard scraping on a violin, will keep all possible expression from the
music, and in just the same proportion will unnecessary physical force
hide the soul in a voice. Indeed with the voice--because the instrument
is finer--the contrast between Nature's way and man's perversion is far
greater.

One of the first cares with a nervous invalid, or with any one who
suffers at all from overstrained nerves, should be for a quiet, mellow
voice. It is not an invariable truth that women with poorly balanced
nerves have shrill, strained voices. There is also a rigid tone in a
nervously low voice, which, though not unpleasant to the general ear,
is expressive to one who is in the habit of noticing nervous people,
and is much more difficult to relax than the high pitched voices. There
is also a forced calm which is tremendous in its nervous strain, the
more so as its owner takes pride in what she considers remarkable
self-control.

Another common cause of fatigue with women is the useless strain in
sewing. "I get so tired in the back of my neck" is a frequent
complaint. "It is because you sew with the back of your neck" is
generally the correct explanation. And it is because you sew with the
muscles of your waist that they feel so strangely fatigued, and the
same with the muscles of your legs or your chest. Wherever the tired
feeling comes it is because of unnatural and officious tension, which,
as soon as the woman becomes sensible of it, can be stopped entirely by
taking two or three minutes now and then to let go of these wrongly
sympathetic muscles and so teach them to mind their own business, and
sew with only the muscles that are needed. A very simple cause of
over-fatigue in sewing is the cramped, strained position of the lungs;
this can be prevented without even stopping in the work, by taking
long, quiet, easy breaths. Here there must be _no exertion whatever_ in
the chest muscles. The lungs must seem to expand from the pressure of
the air alone, as independently as a rubber ball will expand when
external pressure is removed, and they must be allowed to expel the air