is easily pardoned, and almost allowable.  But eccentricity unaccompanied by genius is mere uncorrected selfishness, or want of mental balance.  It is selfishness if it could be corrected and is not, because it makes exactions from others without return.  It will not adapt itself to them but insists on being taken as it is, whether acceptable or not.  At best, eccentricity is a morbid tendency liable to run into extremes when its habits are undisturbed.  An excuse sometimes made for eccentricity is that it is a security against any further mental aberration, perhaps on the same principle that inoculation producing a mild form of diseases is sometimes a safeguard against their attacks.  But if the mind and habits of life can be brought under control, so as to take part in ordinary affairs without attracting attention or having exemptions and allowance made for them, a result of a far higher order will have been attained.  To recognize eccentricity as selfishness is a first step to its cure, and to make oneself serviceable to others is the simplest corrective.  Whatever else they may be, “eccentrics” are not generally serviceable.

Children of vivid imagination, nervously excitable and fragile in constitution, rather easily fall into little eccentric ways which grow very rapidly and are hard to overcome.  One of the commonest of these is talking to themselves.  Sitting still, making efforts to apply their minds to lessons for more than a short time, accentuates the tendency by nerve fatigue.  In reaction against fatigue the mind falls into a vacant state and that is the best condition for the growth of eccentricities and other mental troubles.  If their attention is diverted from themselves, and yet fixed with the less exhausting concentration which belongs to manual work, this diversion into another channel, with its accompany bodily movement, will restore the normal balance, and the little eccentric pose will be forgotten; this is better than being noticed and laughed at and formally corrected.

Manual employments, especially if varied, and household occupations afford a great variety, give to children a sense of power in knowing what to do in a number of circumstances; they take pleasure in this, for it is a thing which they admire in others.  Domestic occupations also form in them a habit of decision, from the necessity of getting through things which will not wait.  For domestic duties do not allow of waiting for a moment of inspiration or delaying until a mood of depression or indifference has passed.  They have a quiet, imperious way of commanding, and an automatic system of punishing when they are neglected, which are more convincing that exhortations.  Perhaps in this particular point lies their saving influence against nerves and moodiness and the demoralization of “giving way.”  Those who have no obligations, whose work will wait for their convenience, and who can if they please let everything go for a time, are more easily broken down by trouble than those whose household duties still have to be done, in the midst of sorrow and trial.  There is something in homely material duties which heals and calms the mind and gives it power to come back to itself.  And in sudden calamities those who know how to make use of their hands do not helplessly wring them, or make trouble worse by clinging to others for support.