the more or less of tension about which I am making such a fuss is a small item in the sum total of a nation’s life, and not worth solemn treatment at a time when agreeable rather than disagreeable things should be talked about.  Well, in one sense the more or less of tension in our faces and in our unused muscles is a small thing:  not much mechanical work is done by these contractions.  But it is not always the material size of a thing that measures its importance:  often it is its place and function.  One of the most philosophical remarks I ever heard made was by an unlettered workman who was doing some repairs at my house many years ago.  “There is very little difference between one man and another,” he said, “when you go to the bottom of it.  But what little there is, is very important.”  And the remark certainly applies to this case.  The general over-contraction may be small when estimated in foot-pounds, but its importance is immense on account of its effects on the over-contracted person’s spiritual life.  This follows as a necessary consequence from the theory of our emotions to which I made reference at the beginning of this article.  For by the sensations that so incessantly pour in from the over-tense excited body the over-tense and excited habit of mind is kept up; and the sultry, threatening, exhausting, thunderous inner atmosphere never quite clears away.  If you never wholly give yourself up to the chair you sit in, but always keep your leg- and body-muscles half contracted for a rise; if you breathe eighteen or nineteen instead of sixteen times a minute, and never quite breathe out at that,—­what mental mood can you be in but one of inner panting and expectancy, and how can the future and its worries possibly forsake your mind?  On the other hand, how can they gain admission to your mind if your brow be unruffled, your respiration calm and complete, and your muscles all relaxed?

Now what is the cause of this absence of repose, this bottled-lightning quality in us Americans?  The explanation of it that is usually given is that it comes from the extreme dryness of our climate and the acrobatic performances of our thermometer, coupled with the extraordinary progressiveness of our life, the hard work, the railroad speed, the rapid success, and all the other things we know so well by heart.  Well, our climate is certainly exciting, but hardly more so than that of many parts of Europe, where nevertheless no bottled-lightning girls are found.  And the work done and the pace of life are as extreme in every great capital of Europe as they are here.  To me both of these pretended causes are utterly insufficient to explain the facts.