Now Dr. Clouston is a trained reader of the secrets of the soul as expressed upon the countenance, and the observation of his which I quote seems to me to mean a great deal.  And all Americans who stay in Europe long enough to get accustomed to the spirit that reigns and expresses itself there, so unexcitable as compared with ours, make a similar observation when they return to their native shores.  They find a wild-eyed look upon their compatriots’ faces, either of too desperate eagerness and anxiety or of too intense responsiveness and good-will.  It is hard to say whether the men or the women show it most.  It is true that we do not all feel about it as Dr. Clouston felt.  Many of us, far from deploring it, admire it.  We say:  “What intelligence it shows!  How different from the stolid cheeks, the codfish eyes, the slow, inanimate demeanor we have been seeing in the British Isles!” Intensity, rapidity, vivacity of appearance, are indeed with us something of a nationally accepted ideal; and the medical notion of ‘irritable weakness’ is not the first thing suggested by them to our mind, as it was to Dr. Clouston’s.  In a weekly paper not very long ago I remember reading a story in which, after describing the beauty and interest of the heroine’s personality, the author summed up her charms by saying that to all who looked upon her an impression as of ‘bottled lightning’ was irresistibly conveyed.

Bottled lightning, in truth, is one of our American ideals, even of a young girl’s character!  Now it is most ungracious, and it may seem to some persons unpatriotic, to criticise in public the physical peculiarities of one’s own people, of one’s own family, so to speak.  Besides, it may be said, and said with justice, that there are plenty of bottled-lightning temperaments in other countries, and plenty of phlegmatic temperaments here; and that, when all is said and done, the more or less of tension about which I am making such a fuss is a very 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