At this time of Year.
At this time of year many girls whose nerves are finely strung suffer from hypochondriasis, or lowness of spirits, more especially if the ground is soft and the sky grey and ugly.
The real hypochondriac is more or less verging on lunacy, because she has delusions. Nothing seems to go right with her, nothing ever will be right again. There is no beauty anywhere in life, which, taken on the whole, is a great big fraud. Why was she ever sent into this world at all, at all, against her will? She is sure she didn't wish to be born, and she wishes she were well out of it. She is sad, melancholy, abstracted, and does nothing with any will.
Well, what shall we do with a girl of this kind? What say you, mother? Medicine? Was that what you suggested? Well, medicine, even if she could swallow the whole pharmacopœia, would do her no more good than a pinch of snuff; in fact, not so much, for the snuff would make her sneeze, and that would help her for a time. She must have a change.
"A change, a change, and many a change,
Faces and footsteps and all things strange."
Dinna forget that. If she cannot get away, she must get a new fad of some kind. Only there is one thing, mother, which pray dinna forget. You must never let her think that you think she is ill. You've got to draw her away from her imaginary miseries, and all will soon be well.
"What would you prescribe for my daughter?" a lady once asked me. "She must eat."
"Then let her have a Shetland pony," I replied abstractedly.
"What!"
"A Shetland pony, and a young one. Oh, not to eat, to ride on, and make a general favourite of. For a time the pony will manage her; then with love and a tiny switch she will learn to manage the pony. After that the fun will begin, and her imaginary troubles will all fly away."
In a month or two the cure was complete, and I used to see the girl—she was young—careering across the common, her bonnie yellow hair and the pony's mane streaming out in the wind and her face as merry as a May morning.