in any one than either out-door exercise or pretty violent
use of the muscles. I knew a nervously-inclined woman who told me that
when she was losing self-control she was accustomed to seek her own
room, and see how long she could keep up a shuttlecock without a
failure. As to weather, again, I should say the worse the weather the
better the exercise of a brisk walk; and my wise mother shall see that
her girls do not dawdle about in-doors, but get a good tramp under all
skies as a part of the habits of life. A sturdy struggle with a rough
day blows the irritability and nervousness of the hour out of any but
the truly sick, and I know as to some folks that the more they are out
of doors the better they are morally as well as physically.

My ideal mother has looked on and seen her daughters grow up to be
strong and vigorous. When the time came, she has not forgotten that she
has had and has to deal with one of her own sex. During the years of
their childhood she should understand, as concerns her girls, that to
differentiate too largely their moral lessons from those of their
brothers is unwise. Something as to this I have said in a former chapter
as concerns the training of invalid children. It applies also to the
well. The boy is taught self-control, repression of emotion, not to cry
when hurt. Teach your girls these things, and you will in the end assure
to them that habitual capacity to suffer moral and physical ill without
exterior show of emotion, which is so true an aid to the deeper interior
control which subdues emotion at its sources, or robs it of its power to
harm. Physical strength and an out-door life will make this lesson easy
and natural. Be certain that weakness of body fosters and excuses
emotional non-restraint, and that under long illness the most hardy man
may become as nervously foolish as a spoiled child. Crave, then, for
your girls strength and bodily power of endurance, and with this insist
that the boy's code of emotional control shall be also theirs. But to do
all this you must begin with them young, and not have to make each year
undo the failure of the last. A dog-trainer once told me that it was a
good thing to whip the smallest pups with a straw, and to teach them
good habits, or try to do so, from birth. He put it strongly; but be
sure that if we wish to build habits thoroughly into the mental and
physical structure of childhood, we shall do well to begin early. As
regards the out-door life,