This Department is conducted in the interest of Girls and Young Women, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor.
I heard a girl say the other day, and she frowned and looked quite cross, and puckered up her pretty face as she said it: "Dear me, I'm so nervous! I can't help fidgeting, and swinging my feet, and knocking over things when I'm tired, and I wish the children would keep still, and that Rob would not rattle the paper when he reads it. I hate to hear the rattling of paper. I'm just as nervous as a witch!"
Think of all this, from a girl fifteen years old. Why, her grandmother might have spoken in that way, and it wouldn't have been remarkable. But Dolly! I looked at her in surprise.
If there is anything among all the things you girls should cultivate, my dears, it is repose. Simply do not allow your feet to swing and your brows to pucker, but compel face and feet to mind your will, and will to be calm and tranquil on the outside if not beneath the surface. A result of this will be that the looking quiet, and moving gently, and holding yourself in control, will bring about a restful condition of mind. You will feel better and be less nervous if you put down the expression of nervousness.
Indigestion is at the bottom of half of our maladies. School-girls should eat plenty of good food at the right times, and should avoid too many sweets. Many a headache and fit of the blues can be traced back to a pound of candy, delicious candy, but too much for the stomach to manage. Bonbons and caramels and all such tempting confections should be eaten after a meal as dessert, not munched all day betweentimes.
One of the prettiest Christmas presents sent me last year was a box of home-made candies, sent by a dear girl friend who has great skill in this line. The candies were laid in a dainty birch-bark box lined with paraffine paper. This box was in its turn fitted tightly into a little silk-lined basket—rose-colored silk was used, and quilted into its folds was some violet-scented sachet powder. The whole was tied with a bow of rose-tinted satin ribbon, and on the very top, fastened down by the ribbon, was a lovely long-stemmed Jacqueminot rose. After the candies had disappeared I took the box for hair-pins and the basket to hold my spools and needle-book, and it still keeps the giver in my mind from day to day.