the school in which the most accomplished artists in this department
are found. A delicate woman is the best instrument; she has such a
magnificent compass of sensibilities. From the deep inward moan which
follows pressure on the great nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the
filaments of taste are struck with a crashing sweep, is a range which
no other instrument possesses."

And again he speaks of the less serious affection of the nerves
as: ... "Not fear, but what I call nervousness,--unreasoning, but
irresistible; as when, for instance, one, looking at the sun going
down, says: 'I will count fifty before it disappears,' and as he goes
on and it becomes doubtful whether he will reach the number, he gets
strangely flurried, and his imagination pictures life and death and
heaven and hell as the issues depending on the completion or
non-completion of the fifty he is counting."

If a man can describe it all so well, what could a woman do? I fear
that her description would be too graphic to be read by us, her
sisters.

Many people have a way of saying of a sufferer:

"There is nothing the matter with her. She is only excessively
nervous."

This "only" is a very serious matter. There is no illness more
difficult to treat and more trying to bear than nervous prostration.
It is a slowly advancing malady which is scarcely recognized as
serious by one's friends until the tired mind succumbs and mental
aberration is the terrible finale of the seemingly slight