LADIES' COLUMN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9303, 1 August 1908, Page 3

LADIES' COLUMN.

A WOMAN'S WORST £»..-/ HON

(By LUTHER H. GULICK, M.8.)

The amount of worrying one does bears no relation whatever to the number of things one has to worry about. If there is no real draft to set the worrier a-worrying, an imaginary draft jrill servo the purpose just as well. The conscientious person who has been told that she is hurting herself through worry resolves to stop the practice, at all costs. But, she asks herself/will she bo able to keep her resolution? May not the tax upon her will-power be more than 6h© is equal to? And if she should fail, despite the Utmost she can do, how humiliating it would be! She shuts -hei teeth tight, lighs and — begins to worry over it. Worry has its cause in internal, not In external, things. A mind that is thoroughly fresh and vigorous rarely Ruocumbs to it; but a mind that is tired out or deprossed makes a fertile seeding ground. It reminds one of the way in which a fatigued body yields to an infectious disease. The fatigued man does not Lave a larger number or typhoid bacilli in his drinking water than his unfatigued neighbour nor breathes a more polluted atmosphere as he walks through the dusty street ; it is merely that his resistance power is lowered. THE WORRYING WOMAN IS NOT BEAUTIFUL. There are worry germs— potential worries, each of them— entering cur consciousness every day; but so long us our minds are full of health and energy we are practically immune. Some day, however, when, we are running on low reserves, the germs begin to thrive, and once the disease has become fixed it is terribly hard to eradicate. Great fatigue destroyc our capacity for the big, highly-coloured emotions. I have seen people — and dogs— too tired to get angry, even when there were the best causes for it in the world. There are times when the most glorious musio leaves us quite untouohed. But, generally speaking, fatigue and the pale emotion of worry gotiand in glove. And the worst of it is that worry, instead of burning itself out, like any of the more violent emotions, appears to thrive and increase the more it gets expression. It becomes chronic. You can worry more and worry harder the ( second day — or week — than, you could the first. The typical worrying woman is not beautiful to look at. She stands badly. Her shoulders droop, she is flat-chested, and the abdomen is thrust forward, destroying every line of bodily grace. Clothes cannot be made to fit that figure. Her face is in accord ; the eyebrows are habitually drawn together — not knotted as in a frown, but obliquely elevated. Between the eyes are gharp vertical wrinkles. The facial contours are over-pronounced ; the mouth is set in a thin, drooping line, the lips nervously compressed, as if steeling j themselves against— or for — trouble. That is the Martha, face. Cosmetics and facial massage do not help it much. If worry ever aceomplishetf anything worth while it would bo easier to look opon it with charity. But we all know tow that is. A pianist who worries about a difficult passage will be doubly liable to have trouble with it. An actor who has once forgotten his lines at a critical point and begins to worry about recalling them next time is paving the sure way to stage-fright. Worry hits at efficiency all along the line. . i Good resolutions do not avail to correct the habit of worry any more than they avail, by themselves, to get us jafely through an emotional crisis of Khe more tempestuous kind. The good resolution only nails one's mind to the worry — makes the existence of that evil thing more conspicuous, more reprehensible, more unassailable. Bad mental habits ore rarely to be conquered by such means. The only kind of campaign which can be counted upon to "succeed against them is one •which leaves them severely alone — which manages to' get the attention fixed on something else. Then the habit is pretty sure to fade away and disappear from view. The problem, in Dther words, is one of finding tie right counter-interests. . DIGESTIVE TROUBLE — WORRY ; WORRY— DIGESTIVE TROUBLE. A certain young man of unusual ability cverworked during his last year In college. He won a great number of distinctions, but it was at the cost of that unconscious and reliable go^od health which is among a man's most enviable assets. The next year, in graduate eohool, it became clear that He must pay some particular regard to his bodily condition, and this deliberate regard (under a doctor's orders) took the form of small daily pills for constipation, a certain specified amount of exercise, and a oaref ully-balanced #chedule of daily work— so many hours for this, so many foT that. The result was not what he hoped for : he could not understand it, and he fell to worrying about it. Worry made him wo^se He needed more j pills; he> had to be more and more par- j ticular about what he ate. His exercise fatigued him more than at the'! start; he could not sleep at night, and he came to the conclusion that he was going slowly but surely downhill, that before long he would be out of the race. It was useless to fcry^ to brace him op ; he looked upon his friends with suspicion, as if they offered him the professional good cheer of a hospital j Irisitoi.

In its general outlines that is the fepord of thousands of cases. It simply follows the familiar downward spiral; digestive trouble — Tvorry: worry—digestivG trouMe; roimd and ronnd without a break, and every thing 0n the bad slant.

And the worst feature of it was Ibis Bad, almost martyrlike, conviction pn iihe part of the young man that he was doing everything for himc^lf that mortal power could do. Had he not •ought a physician's' counsel? Was he Hot making a religion of dumb-bells? I can see him now, with that earnest, ■at look on his face, as he went scrupulously through the list of his exerolsea — one, two, thr«o] four; click, cilack, click, clack, every morning. It was very dismal, and ispy only justification for relatm,, the incident is t>at the final outcome was incontrovertibly peasant It so happened that the yonng man fell in lovo with a woman older than himself, aad wiser (though not in booklearning), ard they were married. By tihe end of a year — I had not seen pirn in the tneant'me — a great change b»d taken place in him His cadaverous ace was filled out into lines of health. There was a look of success and amlition in his eyo that had been en- ; arely quenched : hjs pt-ep was elastio *nd firm ; his whole outlook on iifo was altered. He had given up the little pills. He had — incredible as it may seem — even given up the regular, earWully-caileiilated exercise. He was Working fully up to the average number of hours and. # making a fin© record. iThis transformation had been brought about by the most common-sense and, fcfc the 'same time, scientific methods }n the worM. Hie wife had understood what was the matter with him, amd sho had used all her wisdom and tactr— of which 6he had considerable — to set things right. " I made him let me do his worrying for him," she said, in a personal conversation, " and I ihen forgot to do it. t got him to take me out often fpr rood times— to the park, or the theatre, or in dinner in some inexnensxvA test&ara/i wnera there was mudo and fcaghte?. Then I dfecprerod a lot of

carpentry jobs that needed doing about the apartment; ho developed into quite a carpenter, and, really, ne thought it was great fun. You'd bo surprised to see how interested he got in making a set of ehelves. Tho trouble was, you sgo, that he'd entirely forgotten how to enjoy life, and he had to learn it all over again." The difference in the two ways of getting at hifi trouble was that tho first followed tho formal, professional " treatment " idea, while tho second simply restored natural, wholesome, evory-day conditions of life. There are practical susreeetionfi hero for all of us. In the first place there in. that concrete "handle" of the emotional t life— the voluntary muscles. It is quito within our power to stand up straight, hips well balanced, cheat cut (" eheertinesH " is hardly compatible with great depression of soul I), breathing deep and full, neck against tho back of the collar — meaning an erect, confident 6piney— eyes straight ahead instead of slipping sheepishly along the ground.

Wo know how an unworried person acts and talks, and we can imitate him. We oan sing n« we go about the house, and say good-morning with a fine drntnartic unction which will take in nil the peoplo around us. Then they will treat us m if we were normal human beings like themselves, and that w ixvst ff, we want to bo treated. The tonic effect of being considered "like other people" is surprising; and another surprising thing is the way one's mind really follows and conforms to one's nttitudes, becoming: erect and eelf-confident as the <spine and neck and chest become so. i THE "HOLIDAY HABIT" IS A GOOD THING. Another important item is the holiday habit. "To all things," quoth the preacher, " there is an appointed season." Responsibility must not wekh down on one all the time. Why take it to bed with one at night P That only spoils sleep. Why allow it to sit opposite us at the dinner-table? It ruins digestion. A day in the country with a fishing-rod and bag is a wonderfully wholesome thing for a man, and its benefits are. absolutely irrespective of the concrete results of his fishing. An afternoon in the park with one's fancy-work or some bird-glasses is a splendid part of a nervous woman's programme. Likewise a romp with the children, a leisurely ramble in the country, or a day's trolley-trip — in fact, any yielding to those good, steadying, healthy impulses of leisure and idleness and fun.

Professor William James uses the phrase " a moral holiday," and I like it — in the sense that we can let, and ought to let, our earnest feeling of obligation, duty and all that, slip off our shoulders now and then, while we do just what wo feel like doing. I like to quote a phrase of Horace Bushnell, the great Connecticut preacher, in this connection. " Let's go sin a while," 6aid he, realising how important it is to let up the tension occasionally even in the midst — or most of all, in the midst — of the greatest strain.

Some happy and fortunate people keep in the holiday mood all the time, even in the midst of their work, and I am of the opinion that these are the most successful workers of all. At a moment's notice they can let every care drop out of mind, and take a mental romp, like children at recess. Then when the time for it comes they pick up the burden a rain, fresher and more vigorous^. One ought always to .keep a holiday in one's pocket — even if one has no pocket. It is of far more value thin dumb-bells. Not that dumbbells have no place in the scheme of things. But the kind of exercise that counts for the most is the kind that one goes to, not with virtuous resolution and tense lrps. but as happily and naturally as a duck entering a pond.

It is rieht here that the great value of the hobby comes in, especially of the hobby that involves a certain amount of general physical " work/ It may b«« carpentry — my young friend and his wife that I spoke of above have had a splendid time with their tables and chairs and book-shelves. Golf and boating and swimming — indeed, almost any of the outdoor sports that are not too exhausting — are *' Al " hobbies. And gardening should be spoken of, too, combining, as it does, the training of the muscles and of the {esthetic sense, and serving a very desirable practical object in homemaking.

An ideal hobby calls the big body muscles into play. For this reason carpentry is better than wood-carving, and golf is preferable to embroidery or stamp-collecting. The majority of ue are better off with a hobby which does not seriously tax the eyes nor make constant calls upon the judgment — those are faculties that we need to save up for our main work. But given a side-occupation that fulfils these various requirements, it makes an admirable, balance-wheel — none better — to the big responsibilities of life; and every hour that is dedicated to it helps pull out coffin-nails.