ty at large.

We are all of us more or less nervous, and it is really interesting to
observe what strange outlets woman's natural nervousness chooses.

"I'd walk from Hyde Park to the city hall at midnight and never be a
bit scared. But let me stay in the flat alone after dark and I'm in a
state of terror that would make you weep were you to behold me,"
confesses nervous lady No. 1.

"I have nerves of iron," pipes up nervous lady No. 2. "Except when
there is a thunderstorm. Then I wish I were as dead as Julius Caesar."

"Well!" drawls nervous lady No. 3. "I don't believe in ghosts at all,
but I'm scared to death of 'em. Sometimes I not only keep the gas
burning all night, but I sit up in bed so as to be right ready to run
away from 'em."

Some people have contempt for the nervous ones. I have only pity. Any
one who has gone through the tortures of hearing imaginary burglars
three nights in the week for ten or twelve years on an endless stretch
needs consolation and then a good, straight talk on the beautiful
convenience of horse sense. Most women are always hearing burglars.
Probably one in a thousand turns out to be a real, live housebreaker.
Whenever the wise woman hears one fussing with the lock on the front
door or trying to squeeze into the pantry window, she just says: "Same
old burglar. He'll be gone in the morning," and he always is. That's a
heap better plan than arousing the household and suffering the
unmerciful torture that a family given to ridicule can inflict.

I heard a woman say the other day that she never knew what it was to be
nervous until a certain ragman began to take pedestrian exercises up
and down the alley back of her house. He carries a canvas bag over his
shoulder, and he yells "Eny ol' racks" until that woman locks herself
in a closet and stuffs sofa cushions into her ears. His "Eny ol' racks"
has got on her nerves so that she is simply beside herself until that
man takes himself and his yell out of hearing distance. To be sure, he
yells through his nose, but why in the world that woman should make
herself miserable about something she can't possibly help is a
double-turreted mystery to me. The thing for her to do is to sit down
placidly on the back porch and make up her mind that the ragman is not
going to upset the tranquillity of her existence; that he hasn't any
right to interfere with her happiness, and that she isn't going to be
fool enough to let him. I'll wager a peseta agains