Women’s Looks and Nerves.--A Low-toned Generation.--Children and their
Ways.--Brief Madness.--Women in the Woods.--Singing.--Work well done
the Easiest.--Sleep the Remedy for Temper.--Hours for Sleep.--The
Great Medicines--Sunshine, Music, Work, and Sleep.
Women’s looks depend too much on the state of their nerves and their
peace of mind to pass them over. The body at best is the perfect
expression of the soul. The latter may light wasted features to
brilliance, or turn a face of milk and roses dark with passion or dead
with dullness; it may destroy a healthy frame or support a failing one.
Weak nerves may prove too much for the temper of St. John, and break
down the courage of Saladin. Better things are before us, coming from a
fuller appreciation of the needs of body and soul, but the fact remains
that this is a generation of weak nerves. It shows particularly in the
low tone of spirits common to men and women. They can not bear sunshine
in their houses; they find the colors of Jacques Minot roses and of
Gérome’s pictures too deep; the waltz in _Traviata_ is too brilliant,
Rossini’s music is too sensuous, and Wagner’s too sensational;
Mendelssohn is too light, Beethoven too cold. Their work is fuss;
instead of resting, they idle--and there is a wide difference between
the two things. People who drink strong tea and smoke too many cigars,
read or stay in-doors too much, find the hum of creation too loud for
them. The swell of the wind in the pines makes them gloomy, the sweep
of the storm prostrates them with terror, the everlasting beating of
the surf and the noises of the streets alike weary their worthless
nerves. The happy cries of school-children at play are a grievance to
them; indeed, there are people who find the chirp of the hearth cricket
and the singing tea-kettle intolerable. But it is a sign of diseased
nerves. Nature is full of noises, and only where death reigns is there
silence. One wishes that the men and women who can’t bear a child’s
voice, a singer’s practice, or the passing of feet up and down stairs
might be transported to silence like that which wraps the poles or
the spaces beyond the stars, till they could learn to welcome sound,
without which no one lives.
Children must make noise, and a great deal of it, to be healthy. The
shouts, the racket, the tumble and turmoil they make, are nature’s
way of ventilating their bodies, of sending the breath full into the
very last corner of the lungs, and the blood and nervous fluid into
every cord and fibre of their muscles. Instead of quelling their riot,
it would be a blessing to older folks to join it with them. There is
an awful truth following this assertion. Do you know that men and
women go mad after the natural stimulus which free air and bounding
exercise supply? It is the lack of this most powerful inspiration,
which knows no reaction, that makes them drunkards, gamesters, and
flings them into every dissipation of body and soul. Men and women,
especially those leading studious, repressed lives, often confess to a
longing for some fierce, brief madness that would unseat the incubus
of their lives. Clergymen, editors, writing women, and those who lead
sedentary lives, have said in your hearing and mine that something
ailed them they could not understand. They felt as if they would like
to go on a spree, dance the tarantella, or scream till they were tired.
They thought it the moving of some depraved impulse not yet rooted
out of their natures, and to subdue it cost them hours of struggle
and mortification. Poor souls! They need not have visited themselves
severely if they had known the truth that this lawless longing was
the cry of idle nerve and muscle, frantic through disuse. What the
clergyman wanted was to leave his books and his subdued demeanor for
the hill-country, for the woods, where he could not only walk, but
leap, run, shout, and wrestle, and sing at the full strength of his
voice. The editor needed to leave his cigar and the midnight gas-light
for a wherry race, or a jolly roll and tumble on the green. The woman,
most of all, wanted a tent built for her on the shore, or on the dry
heights of the pine forest, where she would have to take sun by day
and balsamic air by night; where she would have to leap brooks, gather
her own fire-wood, climb rocks, and laugh at her own mishaps. Or, if
she were city-pent, she needed to take some child to the Park and play
ball with it, and run as I saw an elegant girl dressed in velvet and
furs run through Madison Square one winter day with her little sister.
The nervous, capricious woman must be sent to swimming-school, or
learn to throw quoits or jump the rope, to wrestle or to sing. There
is nothing better for body and mind than learning to sing, with proper
method, under a teacher who knows how to direct the force of the voice,
to watch the strength, and expand the emotions at the same time. The
health of many women begins to improve from the time they study music.
Why? Because it furnishes an outlet for their feelings, and equally
because singing exerts the lungs and muscles of the chest which lie
inactive. The power for the highest as well as the lowest note is
supplied by the bellows of the lungs, worked by the mighty muscles of
the chest and sides. In this play the red blood goes to every tiny cell
that has been white and faint for want of its food; the engorged brain
and nervous centres where the blood has settled, heating and irritating
them, are relieved; the head feels bright, the hands grow warm, the
eyes clear, and the spirits lively. This is after singing strongly for
half an hour. The same effect is gained by any other kind of brisk work
that sets the lungs and muscles going, but as music brings emotion into
play, and is a pleasure or a relief as it is melancholy or gay, it is
preferable. The work that engages one’s interest as well as strength
is always the best. Per contra, whatever one does thoroughly and with
dispatch seldom continues distasteful. There is more than we see at a
glance in the command, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with
thy might.” The reason given, because the time is short for all the
culture and all the good work we wish to accomplish, is the apparent
one; but the root of it lies in the necessities of our being. Only work
done with our might will satisfy our energies and keep their balance.
Half the women in the world are suffering from chronic unrest, morbid
ambitions, and disappointments that would flee like morning mist before
an hour of hearty, tiring work.
It is not so much matter what the work is, as how it is done.
The weak should take work up by degrees, working half an hour and
resting, then going at it steadily again. It is better to work a little
briskly and rest than to keep on the slow drag through the day. Learn
not only to do things well, but to do them quickly. It is disgraceful
to loiter and drone over one’s work. It is intolerable both in music
and in life.
The body, like all slaves, has the power to react on its task-master.
All mean passions appear born of diseased nerves. Was there ever a
jealous woman who did not have dyspepsia, or a high-tempered one
without a tendency to spinal irritation? Heathen tempers in young
people are a sign of wrong health, and mothers should send for
physician as well as priest to exorcise them. The great remedy for
temper is--sleep. No child that sleeps enough will be fretful; and the
same thing is nearly as true of children of larger growth. Not less
than eight hours is the measure of sleep for a healthy woman under
fifty. She may be able to get on with less, and do considerable work,
either with mind or hands. But she could do so much more, to better
satisfaction, by taking one or two hours more sleep, that she can not
afford to lose it. Women who use their brains--teachers, artists,
writers, and housewives (whose minds are as hard wrought in overseeing
a family as those of any one who works with pen or pencil)--need all
the sleep they can get. From ten to six, or, for those who do not
want to lose theatres and lectures altogether, from eleven to seven,
are hours not to be infringed upon by women who want clear heads and
steady tempers. What they gain by working at night they are sure to
lose next day, or the day after. It is impossible to put the case too
strongly. Unless one has taken a narcotic, and sleeps too long, one
should _never_ be awakened. The body rouses itself when its demands are
satisfied. A warm bath on going to bed is the best aid to sleep. People
often feel drowsy in the evening about eight or nine o’clock, but are
wide awake at eleven. They should heed the warning. The system needs
more rest than it gets, and is only able to keep up by drawing on its
reserve forces. Wakefulness beyond the proper time is a sign of ill
health as much as want of appetite at meals--it is a pity that people
are not as much alarmed by it. The brain is a more delicate organ than
the stomach, and nothing so surely disorders it as want of sleep.
In trouble or sorrow, light sedatives should be employed, like red
lavender or the bromate of potassa, for the nerves have more to bear,
and need all the rest they can get. The warm bath, I repeat, is better
than either.
Sunshine, music, work, and sleep are the great medicines for women.
They need more sleep than men, for they are not so strong, and their
nerves perhaps are more acute. Work is the best cure for ennui and for
grief. Let them sing, whether of love, longing, or sorrow, pouring out
their hearts, till the love returns into their own bosoms, till the
longing has spent its force, or till the sorrow has lifted itself into
the sunshine, and taken the hue of trust, not of despair.