Think of the many trifles which, by being magnified and kept in the
foreground, obstruct the way to all possible sight or appreciation
of things that really hold a more important place. The cook, the
waitress, various other annoyances of housekeeping; a gown that does
not suit, the annoyances of travel, whether we said the right thing
to so-and-so, whether so-and-so likes us or does not like
us,--indeed, there is an immense army of trivial imps, and the
breadth of capacity for entertaining these imps is so large in some
of us as to be truly encouraging; for if the domain were once
deserted by the imps, there remains the breadth, which must have the
same capacity for holding something better. Unfortunately, a long
occupancy by these miserable little offenders means eventually the
saddest sort of contraction. What a picture for a new Gulliver!--a
human being overwhelmed by the imps of triviality, and bound fast to
the ground by manifold windings of their cobweb-sized thread.

This exaggeration of trifles is one form of nervous disease. It
would be exceedingly interesting and profitable to study the various
phases of nervous disease as exaggerated expressions of perverted
character. They can be traced directly and easily in many cases. If
a woman fusses about trivialities, she fusses more when she is
tired. The more fatigue, the more fussing; and with a persistent
tendency to fatigue and fussing it does not take long to work up or
down to nervous prostration. From this form of nervous excitement
one never really recovers, except by a hearty acknowledgment of the
trivialities as trivialities, when, with growing health, there is a
growing sense of true proportion.

I have seen a woman spend more attention, time, and nerve-power on
emphasizing the fact that her hands were all stained from the dye on