duties. "Nothing to do is worse than nothing to eat," said a great man,
Thomas Carlyle; and observing parents or teachers know this to be
especially true of young people. It makes no difference that they don't
want to do anything or to exert themselves. The very absence of exertion
makes them weak and indisposed to effort. It is a lamentable lack at the
present time among a large proportion of the daughters of comfortable
and refined homes, that they have small physical strength and no
qualities of endurance at all. They are "all tired out" if they sweep
and dust or do housework for an hour or two, or take a half-mile walk on
an errand, or sew continuously for an hour. Very likely they will want
to lie down and rest an hour after such exertion. This is all the
result of unexercised muscles and mental indolence. That mother was
quite right, who, when her boarding-school daughter complained that it
made her arms ache to sweep, replied: "Well, you must sweep till it
doesn't make them ache." Mind and body both grow strong through
exercise. Unexercised muscles, of course, will be weak and flabby and
tire easily. But the young girl whom it tires to work is most likely on
the _qui vive_ about some folly or other nearly all the time. Lack of
healthful mental and bodily occupation and stimulus will almost
certainly produce a craving for unhealthy excitement. Such a girl is apt
to be constantly planning for mere pleasure and to have "a good time."
And, oh! what an unsatisfying, unworthy aim in life is this, and how
pernicious in its effects! Pleasure and "a good time" are all very
well, but unless they are partaken of sparingly they produce a mental
effect similar to that which the constant use of desserts and
sweetmeats, instead of plain substantial food, would produce in the
physical system. Association with the idle and the mere pleasure-seeker
is therefore to be guarded against, for their influence cannot but be
harmful.