a clearer mind than her own.

"For goodness' sake, don't tell that to Alice," a young fellow said of
his sister. "She will have fits first, and then indigestion and
insomnia for six weeks." The lad was not a nerve specialist; neither
was he interested in nerves--except to get away from them; but he spoke
truly from common sense and his own experience with his sister.

The point is, to drop the emotions and face the facts. If nervous women
would see the necessity for that, and would practice it, it would be
surprising to see how their nerves would improve.

I once knew a woman who discovered that her emotions were running away
with her and making her nervously ill. She at once went to work with a
will, and every time something happened to rouse this great emotional
wave she would deliberately force herself to relax and relax until the
wave had passed over her and she could see things in a sensible light.
When she was unable to go off by herself and lie down to relax, she
would walk with her mind bent on making her feet feel heavy. When you
drop the tension of the emotion, the emotion has nothing to hold on to
and it must go.

I knew another woman who did not know how to relax; so, to get free
from this emotional excitement, she would turn her attention at once to
figures, to her personal accounts or even to saying the multiplication
table. The steady concentration of her mind on dry figures and on
"getting her sums right" left the rest of her brain free to drop its
excitement and get into a normal state again.

Again it is sometimes owing to the pleasant emotions which some women
indulge in to such an extreme that they are made ill. How many times
have we heard of women who were "worn to a shred" by the delight of an
opera, or a concert, or an exciting play? If these women only knew it,
their pleasure would be far keener if they would let the enjoyment pass
through them, instead of tightening up in their nerves and trying to
hold on to it.

Nature in us always tends toward health, and toward pleasant
sensations. If we relax out of painful emotions we find good judgment
and happy instincts behind them. If we relax so that pleasant emotions
can pass over our nerves they leave a deposit of happy sensation
behind, which only adds to the store that Nature has provided for us.

To sum up: The two main reasons why women are nervous are that they do
not take intelligent care of their bodies, and that they do not govern