One of the first cares with a nervous invalid, or with any one who suffers at all from overstrained nerves, should be for a quiet, mellow voice.  It is not an invariable truth that women with poorly balanced nerves have shrill, strained voices.  There is also a rigid tone in a nervously low voice, which, though not unpleasant to the general ear, is expressive to one who is in the habit of noticing nervous people, and is much more difficult to relax than the high pitched voices.  There is also a forced calm which is tremendous in its nervous strain, the more so as its owner takes pride in what she considers remarkable self-control.

Another common cause of fatigue with women is the useless strain in sewing.  “I get so tired in the back of my neck” is a frequent complaint.  “It is because you sew with the back of your neck” is generally the correct explanation.  And it is because you sew with the muscles of your waist that they feel so strangely fatigued, and the same with the muscles of your legs or your chest.  Wherever the tired feeling comes it is because of unnatural and officious tension, which, as soon as the woman becomes sensible of it, can be stopped entirely by taking two or three minutes now and then to let go of these wrongly sympathetic muscles and so teach them to mind their own business, and sew with only the muscles that are needed.  A very simple cause of over-fatigue in sewing is the cramped, strained position of the lungs; this can be prevented without even stopping in the work, by taking long, quiet, easy breaths.  Here there must be no exertion whatever in the chest muscles.  The lungs must seem to expand from the pressure of the air alone, as independently as a rubber ball will expand when external pressure is removed, and they must be allowed to expel the air with the same independence.  In this way the growth of breathing power will be slow, but it will be sure and delightfully restful.  Frequent, full, quiet breaths might be the means of relief to many sufferers, if only they would take the trouble to practise them faithfully,—­a very slight effort compared with the result which will surely ensue.  And so it is with the fatigue from sewing.  I fear I do not exaggerate, when I say that in nine cases out of ten a woman would rather sew with a pain in her neck than stop for the few moments it would take to relax it and teach it truer habits, so that in the end the pain might be avoided entirely.  Then, when the inevitable nervous exhaustion follows, and all the kindred troubles that grow out of it she pities herself and is pitied by others, and wonders why God thought best to afflict her with suffering and illness.  “Thought best!” God never thought best to give any one pain.  He made His laws, and they are wholesome and perfect and true, and if we disobey them we must suffer the consequences!  I knock my head hard against a stone and then wonder why God thought best to give me the headache.  There would be as much sense in that as there is in much of the so-called Christian resignation to be found in the world to-day.  To be sure there are inherited illnesses and pains, physical and mental, but the laws are so made that the compensation of clear-sightedness and power for use gained by working our way rightly out of all inheritances and suffering brought by others, fully equalizes any apparent loss.