Another desideratum is exercise, regular and abundant.  Housework and walking are all that a woman needs, although she may find great pleasure as well as benefit from horseback riding, rowing and tennis.  But let her not allow herself to tax her strength to the point of over-weariness.  The amount of sleep needed by a woman is a mooted point, but unless she is what slangy boys term “constitutionally tired,” she should sleep enough at night to ensure her against drowsiness in the daytime.  For the elderly and feeble, an occasional nap after the noonday meal, especially during the warm weather, will prove most refreshing.

Try to bear in mind that you are not the only one concerned in your health.  Higginson, in speaking of the duty of girls to observe all hygienic laws, tells us that, “unless our girls are healthy, the country is not safe.  The fate of institutions may hang on the precise temperament which our next president shall have inherited from his mother.”

CHAPTER XXIX.

CHEERFULNESS AS A CHRISTIAN DUTY.

Near me stands an anniversary present from a dear friend.  It is a large “loving cup,” and is just now full of my favorite nasturtiums—­glowing as if they held in concentrated form all the sunshine which has brought them to their glory of orange, crimson, gold and scarlet.  The ware of which the cup is made is a rich brownish-yellow in color, and between each of the three handles is a dainty design in white-and-cream, surrounded by an appropriate motto.  The one turned toward me at present forms the text of my present talk and will, I hope, prove a happy hint to some of my readers: 

   “Be always as happy as ever you can,
   For no one delights in a sorrowful man.”

The rhyming couplet has set me to thinking, long and seriously, upon the duty of cheerfulness, a duty which we owe not only to our fellow-men, but to ourselves.  It is such an uncomfortable thing to be miserable that I marvel that any sensible human being ever gives way to the inclination to look on the dark side of life.

In writing this article, I wish to state in the beginning that the women to whom it is addressed are not those over whom bereavement has cast dark shadows.  For genuine grief and affliction I have vast and unbounded sympathy.  For imaginary woes I have none.  There is a certain class of sentimentalists to whom it is positive joy to be made to weep, and the longer they can pump up the tears the more content they are.  These are people who have never known a heart-sorrow.  They revel in books that end in death, and they listen to the details of a dying-bed scene with ghoulish interest.  Had genuine bereavement ever been theirs, they would find only harrowing pain in such things.  Shallow brooks always gurgle most loudly in passing over the stones underlying them.  The great and mighty river flows silently and calmly above the large boulders hidden far below the surface.