Emotions are often not even exaggerated but are from the beginning imaginary; and there are no more industrious imps of evil than these sham feelings.  The imps have no better field for their destructive work than in various forms of morbid, personal attachment, and in what is commonly called religion,—­but which has no more to do with genuine religion than the abnormal personal likings have to do with love.

It is a fact worthy of notice that the two powers most helpful, most strengthening, when sincerely felt and realized, are the ones oftenest perverted and shammed, through morbid states and abnormal nervous excitement.  The sham is often so perfect an image of the reality that even the shammer is deceived.

To tell one of these pseudo-religious women that the whole attitude of her externally sanctified life is a sham emotion, would rouse anything but a saintly spirit, and surprise her beyond measure.  Yet the contrast between the true, healthful, religious feeling and the sham is perfectly marked, even though both classes follow the same forms and belong to the same charitable societies.  With the one, religion seems to be an accomplishment, with a rivalry as to who can carry it to the finest point; with the other, it is a steadily growing power of wholesome use.

This nervous strain from sham emotions, it must be confessed, is more common to the feminine nature.  So dangerously prevalent is it that in every girls’ school a true repression of the sham and a development of real feeling should be the thoughtful, silent effort of all the teachers.  Any one who knows young girls feels deeply the terrible harm which comes to them in the weakening of their delicate, nervous systems through morbid, emotional excitement.  The emotions are vividly real to the girls, but entirely sham in themselves.  Great care must be taken to respect the sense of reality which a young girl has in these mistakes, until she can be led out so far that she herself recognizes the sham; then will come a hearty, wholesome desire to be free from it.

A school governed by a woman with strong “magnetism,” and an equally strong love of admiration and devotion, can be kept in a chronic state of hysteria by the emotional affection of the girls for their teacher.  When they cannot reach the teacher they will transfer the feeling to one another.  Where this is allowed to pervade the atmosphere of a girls’ school, those who escape floods of tears or other acute hysterical symptoms are the dull, phlegmatic temperaments.

Often a girt will go from one of these morbid attachments to another, until she seems to have lost the power for a good, wholesome affection.  Strange as it may seem, the process is a steady hardening of the heart.  The same result comes to man or woman who has followed a series of emotional flirtations,—­the perceptions are dulled, and the whole tone of the system, mental and physical, is weakened.  The effect is in exact correspondence in another degree with the result which follows an habitual use of stimulants.