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.
Do I ever have the blues? Why, Lottie, what a question to come from a girl of sixteen? Am I to infer that you do, at your age, with the world a blaze of beauty, and your feet so light and your heart so young that you ought to go skipping instead of walking, if only you dared to let the gladness of your life overflow.
But girls do have the blues, insists Gretchen, at my elbow; and she adds that they have reasons enough: that they are not always understood, that they have fancies and thoughts which they cannot always explain, that, in short, girls are not always as happy as they look.
Granting that this may be true of some girls, what are they to do? As a person not subject to these disagreeable visitations, I can speak with the sort of authority the doctor has when he enters the room of a patient. The doctor need not have a fever in order to prescribe for it. In fact, he will prescribe more successfully if he be well himself. The blues make the person suffering from their presence extremely uncomfortable, and her discomfort in a subtle way acts upon others, so that nobody is quite cheerful in her neighborhood. People who are "blue" are quite often cross as well, and are unable to accept pleasantly the ups and downs of every day. Now, when you think of it, you must admit that it is a very humiliating experience to be cross, for cross people are 'disagreeable, and none of us wishes to be that.
The best way to get rid of the blues is not to own that they have you. Put on your hat and go for a walk. Call on a friend and take her the piece of music you are to try together, or the book you have just finished, which you would like to lend her. Do something kind for somebody, and stop thinking about yourself. The greatest waste of time in this world, dears, is to think too much about one's self. Mrs. Browning gives the right idea in her poem, "My Kate," where she says,
"'Twas her thinking of others made you think of her."
Don't laugh at me, girls, when I tell you that half the low spirits one hears of springs from a very prosaic source. That pound of chocolates, that rich pudding, that piece of frosted cake, all of them very delicious, but all very indigestible, are to blame, in most instances, for a young girl's depression. Try what Emerson called "plain living and high thinking," and see how cheery life will become.