HEALTH
Health has more to do with our successful employment than most of us have yet realized. To prove that this is true a woman who is an employment expert told the following story:
"The other night I was sitting in my office waiting for a girl who could not come to see me in the daytime. The manager of a business house who was interested in the girl had asked me if I would advise her how to change her work from one employment which she liked fairly well to another in which she was greatly interested. I had formed no particular idea of what the girl would be like. My day had been full and I had had no time to consider her case, knowing only that she wanted to change her work, and that she was a girl who was already earning her living.
"She came in, looked at me with a straight, steady glance and offered me her hand with a simplicity which took no note of the fact that an older person is supposed usually to make the first advance. The fact that we shook hands gave me an opportunity to notice that her hand was neither nervous nor tremulous. The quality of her handclasp can be summed up in saying that it was reassuring and agreeable. I wonder if most people know how all these points are noticed by employment experts and employers. The way in which the girl looked at me and the way in which she shook hands told me that she was physically and mentally in good condition.
"She was about five feet ten, and unusually well built and well developed. She was dressed in noticeably good taste. She was a rather large woman, or rather girl, for she was only a child in years. She was not what anyone would call 'a beauty,' but she was so splendidly well and carried herself so finely that she made an excellent impression. I do not know when I have been so much attracted by anyone. Almost any employer would have given her a position if he had had one vacant which she could fill. I wish all girls could realize what an advantage it is to be well physically and mentally and to look as well as this girl did.
"When I came to question her I found that her story was unusual from the point of view of employment. I thought from her appearance that she might be eighteen or nineteen. But to my astonishment she told me that she was fifteen and that she had been earning her living for nearly a year. She was a stenographer and had had three years' training in a high school of commerce. Her father had died and she was helping to support her mother. Several factors were against her satisfactory employment. She was under age and she had not completed her school course when she went to work. From these two facts it would have been natural to suppose that she would obtain a poor position, both in the character of the work required and in payment. She was earning fifteen dollars a week, a rate of payment three or four dollars a week higher than the average wage paid beginners in the city where she was employed. It was her splendid health, her look of substantial character and her good manner which had won this girl employment when another girl of fifteen, less healthy and less developed, might have failed to find any satisfactory position at all."
A time is likely to come in the world's history when the laws of right living are so well understood that poor health will be regarded as blameworthy. In a number of cases we must regard it as blameworthy now. To be in the company of a radiantly healthy person is a cheerful blessing. Let us make up our minds to be this kind of blessing to our friends.
Happily we can do a great deal to make ourselves healthy. We need to eat wisely, to dress properly and to rest well. Every girl should learn to regulate these things wisely for herself. Other people can only help to make us healthy, but the real work of being healthy we must do for ourselves, and this means daily attention and daily care. A famous doctor said once that the average baby is meant to live; all the baby asks is to be given a good chance. In the same way the average human being is meant to be healthy. Health depends—the statement is so important that it will bear repeating—on care in eating and resting and on proper clothing. Health depends also on cleanliness, inside the body and out; this means cleanliness in every respect. A daily bath and proper attention to one's body are essential to health.
The girl should learn as soon as possible that her health as well as her appearance will depend on her taking daily exercise. She may suppose that exercise is a dull tiresome thing which she is told by other people to take, but which in itself has no interest for her. Here, as in other things, the girl must learn to be her own captain, her own commanding officer. She should give herself orders to take daily exercise. If any of us needs a lesson in keeping well and beautiful, we can get that lesson from our little friends the birds. Every creature, wild and tame, winged and four-footed, takes the most scrupulous care of its physical condition. They clean, stretch, brush, polish, until every feather or hair, until every muscle and sinew is in fit condition.
We should think of our bodies as fine instruments which are given into our keeping. The human body is the finest and most wonderful instrument in the world, and it is sad and amazing how often we fail to take the most ordinary care of it. There are different systems of exercise, and the girl should find one that will bring all her muscles properly into play. Five or ten minutes' exercise a day is all that is required. There are many muscles which are not used in walking or ordinary play, and if these muscles are not exercised regularly then that fine instrument your body will get out of good condition and will not show correct and beautiful lines. A girl should train herself to stand properly. A simple test by which she can tell if she is holding herself rightly is to walk a few steps on tiptoe. In order to do this she must hold herself correctly. To have a good body, well shaped and in right proportion, it is necessary to hold one's self correctly all the time. Habits such as these are not acquired all at once. It is only by persistence day by day that the girl will learn to walk and to stand properly and will find that her body is becoming lithe, strong and healthy, an instrument which it is a joy to use and which will make her appearance as attractive as it ought to be.