Various

“ What is true of the value of imagination to the student of books is equally true of its importance to all who devote attention to music and art. Without imagination, the pursuit of either is little better than a waste of time, and the more of it we bring to their culture, the more successful we shall be. Let girls, then, and their parents and teachers, look to it and do what they can to encourage this most spiritual of all our faculties, the very life of artistic effort, and a magician to whom everything is possible. ”

“ The conversation concerning the French poodle has upset her altogether; she leaves her first companion and seeks another. But here she can boast no greater success. Perhaps she will brave a third effort at conversation, but it is all to no purpose; she is either too fearful of committing herself or saying something unseemly, or else she knows that her companion is secretly laughing at her. Utterly downhearted she eventually sits down in a corner and remains silently agitated for the rest of the evening.
What a terrible state is that of self-consciousness, and yet how common! ”

“ I read and enthusiastically admired, and while admiring tried to appreciate the difficulty which women so placed would find in realising sufferings of which they could know so little by experience—of some troubles they could absolutely know nothing—the want of bread, the deadly fatigue of overwork, the misery of children crying for food, the bitterness of bare poverty, of homes which do not shelter, of empty fireplaces in cold, and shadowless rooms in the heat—and in such heat as we have been taught lately can be suffered even in this dear England of ours. ”

“ Yesterday we were interviewing a gentleman “lodger” in an asylum, who had come to the conclusion that all the inmates of the house—nurses, patients, physicians and servants—were all insane, himself alone excepted. This is a common creed in lunatic asylums.
No, everyone is not insane. The doctrine is fallacious. But we all pass through phases in our lives when our minds are not capable of fully grasping every detail of the situation. In other words, we are all liable to nervousness.
What is nervousness? Think for yourself and try to answer the question. It is difficult, we admit. ”

“ Is not nervousness a state in which the mind does not rise to the situation? Is it not a condition of uncertainty? Is it not, as it were, a feeling that you know not what step to take next or what answer to give to a question? Is it not a conviction that you are out of place?
Indeed, it seems to us that nervousness is the expression of being mentally ill at ease.
Few persons realise what a terrible disease nervousness really is. It is one of the greatest annoyances of youth. It renders many girls utterly miserable when they first “come out.” ”

“ A great and good use of imagination is to reproduce to us our past lives. It is something more than memory. Memory says I was at such a place on a certain day, but imagination brings up the place—the Highland loch, it may be, in the glory of an autumn morning, the purple heather on the hills, the steamer at the pier, the hotel overlooking the steamer, the young man in the coffee-room smiling to the landlord’s daughter, the taste of the fresh salmon, the very smell of the burned oat-cake. ”

“ Beauty vanishes, but mental culture endures and is found attractive, and even charming, to the very end of the chapter. There are few sadder sights than that of a beauty in ruins with an untrained intellect and none more refreshing than that of a bright old wrinkled face, with a mind behind it stored with information and animated by shrewdness and good nature. ”

“ And, even where its subjects are not positively objectionable, imagination sometimes wastes its energy on whimsicalities and runs riot in the broad fields of extravagance and nonsense. Of such a nature was the fertile fancy of an old friend of ours who, to the end of her days, showed great reverence for dogs and cats because she believed them animated by the souls of her ancestors.
A very silly use of imagination is to picture to ourselves suspicions, dangers and misfortunes. ”

“ This wee warming-stove has saved its cost over and over again, and is so easily lit up that I manage to have the comfort of a fire long before my house-maidens have quitted the beautiful land of nod. All undue dryness of the atmosphere is counteracted by keeping a pipkin of water steaming on its face, and it is so clean that even the most delicate curtains are not soiled by its use. ”

“ Imagination is a first-rate faculty by which to obtain a look at ourselves, and when we get a little more of it, it is like turning up the gas to get a clearer view. We see ourselves then as others see us, and a pretty exhibition it sometimes is. ”

“ Ask yourself, therefore, always when you read a chapter of any notable book, not what you saw printed on a grey page, but what you see pictured in the glowing gallery of your imagination. Have your fancy always vivid and full of body and colour. ”

“ It is in the workings of the mind that we must seek the causes of nervousness.
We are not all born with the same mental powers. Each inherits from her parents certain hereditary tendencies. We all know that insanity runs in families; so does nervousness; so does every kind of mental inclination, but only to a certain extent. We do not inherit the virtues, the vices, the powers or the mental shortcomings of our parents; we inherit a tendency to them—a tendency which may develop and reproduce in us the minds of our fathers. Or these tendencies may be modified or suppressed by education ”

“ The self-conceited girl believes herself perfect. She cannot make a mistake. What she says must be right. She has no fear of committing herself. Why should she ever be nervous? And she never is nervous.
The self-conscious girl is the reverse of this. Not only does she know her shortcomings, but she takes an exceedingly gloomy view of everything. Truly she is always thinking about herself, but her thoughts are not flattering. ”

“ Of course every house mother knows that when cooking is being done, a clear good fire is necessary.
Mary Jane may during those halcyon hours pile on the best coal and be allowed liberally to “rake” it with a heavy poker, otherwise she will send up flabby pastry, raw potatoes, and half-cooked beef. But directly the midday meal be over, every scrap of green stuff, cabbage stalks, every bone—fish or flesh—is laid on the glowing embers of the range in mine house. A layer of wet coal-dust is added, the iron rings are put in place, the door is shut, and all dampers are pulled out. ”

“ There are doubtless many people who think that nervousness can be cured by diet, exercise and drugs. To such as hold this view we readily admit that when nervousness is caused by bodily ill-health, or by lack of precautions to the laws of well-being, such is the case. But the true nervousness, seen so commonly in perfectly healthy persons, who rigorously follow all the laws laid down by physicians and general experience, is totally uninfluenced by physical treatment of any kind. ”

“ There is danger in all things, for all—yes, even the best—may be misused. Imagination is a friendly help to elevate, direct, and brighten our lives as we have seen, but that does not happen with the foolish. Instead of occupying this wondrous faculty with what is profitable and beautiful, they devote it to what is degrading and mean, and thus become a great deal worse with imagination than they would be without it. ”

“ At school we learn to read, to write. We learn a little science, perhaps a smattering of art and the elements of a language or two. Is this all the education required by man? Is this sufficient food for the mind of man for threescore years and ten? Do you learn nothing else in your life than this little handful of unimportant subjects? No, you do not! Far more than nine-tenths of your education is gained without your knowing how: not without effort, but without your knowing that you are educating yourself. ”

“ By imagination girls are witches to foretell what is to happen the day after to-morrow.
Now we spend our time ill if we build castles in the air and trust to them as if they{267} were substantial edifices. But, for all that, to let the imagination dwell on what is yet to come has its uses and may be a valuable help to conduct.
Castles in the air and dreams, too hopelessly extravagant ever to be realised have brightened many dull and monotonous lives, and for that reason alone, within bounds, are to be encouraged. ”

“ This is the proper place to point out that the popular idea that nervousness is due to a feeble intelligence is totally untrue. It requires a considerable amount of mental power to be able to be nervous. Some of the greatest men in history have been conspicuously nervous.
The girl who rapidly falls in with social customs, who can join in conversations on the ordinary subjects of talk, and who can grasp and retain the little ways of society which she cannot fail to observe, need never fear of retaining any temporary nervousness she may have experienced when she first “came out.” ”

“ Since experience is the great cure for nervousness, gain all experience you can both by reading, by the study of the arts and sciences and by observation of the doings of others and the working of this great world. Keep your eyes open and look around you. However limited your own circle may be, it still contains more to be studied than you can learn in your lifetime. Trivial literature, and especially cheap novelettes, should be avoided, for they give you a false notion of life and deal with silly and impossible predicaments. ”

“ You have not got a true notion of education! You say education but you mean study; you confine the term to that part of education which is learnt at school and from books; you have fallen into the common error of the age by supposing that education is synonymous with schooling! ”

“ Nothing can be beautiful in our ingle-nook which conveys a false notion of the purpose to which it will be applied. Decorative art requires that the nature of construction should as far as possible be revealed or indicated by the ornament which it bears.
“The beauty of fitness” must be borne in mind when we are tempted to fill the fire-baskets in our ingle-nooks with tinsel and shavings, paper designs or artificial flowers. In the huge chimney space of an ancient fireplace logs of wood carelessly piled on dogs was a fit and appropriate decoration. ”

“ It is unfortunately a fact that nervous girls are often quite themselves when discussing the weaknesses of their friends and neighbours, but such conversation begets a distrust of their friends, and we have no doubt that the habit of talking against one’s neighbours is sometimes a direct cause of that form of nervousness in which girls cannot talk to their own friends without blushing. They know what their friends say about others behind their backs, and they fear that they too will be discussed in their absence. ”

“ Not all minds delight in poetry; but all minds are impressed and elevated by an imposing and a striking fact. To exercise the imagination on the lives of great and good men brings with it a double gain ”

“ It is not possible to put everything in the title, otherwise we might have made this one run, “Wanted: a little more imagination for those who, at the right times, have not enough, and a little less for those who, on all possible occasions, have too much.” But it is the “too little” which is of most importance for the purposes of ordinary life, and that is why the title stands above as it does. Our first business is to be practical and to speak of imagination as an aid in the work and conduct and duty of every day. ”

“ The value of having a smutless, smokeless, dustless fire can never be over-estimated in this uncertain climate. Even many evenings in July or August call for a small fire, and the easiness of lighting this stove in the ingle-nook of mine house prevents such a necessity (as I consider it) being considered a luxury.
I do not think I need speak of the virtues of gas as a heating agent. We all recognise the desirability of its use; but, alas! where economy has to be considered in our ingle-nooks, we cannot recommend it. In place of coal gas is desirable ”

“ Girls who have now but little short lives, with comparatively few incidents to recall, can hardly realise what a gratification this wandering over the enchanted ground of imagination imparts to mature years. ”

“ Possessed of a vivid and healthy imagination, a girl may live very much alone and yet be full of company, entertaining a ghostly good society that in some respects is even an improvement on that frequented by her less isolated friends. ”

“ Often when nervousness is so intractable that it cannot be cured by other means, we advise the subjects to leave society for a year or two, to travel, if possible, or else to gain an insight into the ways and working of the world before again attempting to face the terrors of social life.
In many parts of this article we have maintained that self-consciousness was an exceedingly common and important factor of nervousness and blushing. If we could remove self-consciousness we could cure most, if not all, forms of nervousness. ”

“ The girl who has never spoken to anyone except her own friends is nervous when she first speaks to a stranger. After she has been introduced to one or two persons her nervousness vanishes, for she has become used to her new situation. ”

“ Let us glance a little into these defects of education which cause nervousness.
From what has been said, the reader will perceive that the lack of knowledge of herself or her companion is the commonest cause of nervousness; this indeed is the case. The girl who leaves the nursery for the first time is shy and retiring: she cannot speak to anyone without confusion; she has no experience of life. A new episode has occurred and she cannot at once rise to the situation. ”