and arrows of outrageous fortune" are multiplied in number, and furthermore the reaction to them is intensified. In the "Arabian Nights" the princess boasts that a rose petal bruises her skin, while her competitor in delicacy is made ill by a fiber of cotton in her silken garments. So with the hyperæsthetic; an unintentional overlooking is reacted to as a deadly insult; the thwarting of any desire robs life of its savor; sounds become noises; a bit of litter, dirt; a little reality, intolerable crudity.

A woman with this temperament is a poor candidate for matrimony unless there goes with it a capacity for adjustment, unusual in this type. Most men have their habitual crudities, their daily lapses, and every home is the theater of a constant struggle with the disagreeable. Intensely pleased by the utmost refinements, these are too uncommon to make up for the shortcomings. The hyperæsthetic woman is constantly the prey of the most deënergizing of emotions,—disgust. "It makes me sick" is not an exaggerated expression of her feeling. And her afflicted household size up the situation with the brief analysis, "Everything makes her nervous." Every one in her household falls under the tyranny of her disposition, mingling their concern with exasperation, their pity with a silent almost subconscious contempt.

Next comes the over-conscientious type. Whatever conscience is, whether implanted by God, or the social code sanctified by training, teaching, and a social nature, there can be no question that, as the Court of Appeals, it does harm as well as good.

There are people whose lack of conscience is back of all manner of crimes, from murder down to careless, slack work; whose cruelty, lust, and selfishness operate unhampered by restraint. On the other hand there are others whose hypertrophied conscience works in one of two directions. If they are zealots, convinced of the righteousness of their own decisions and conclusions, their conscience spurs them on to reforming the world. Since they are more often wrong than right, they become, as it were, a sort of misdirected Providence, raising havoc with the happiness and comfort of others. Whether the conscienceless or those overburdened with this type of conscience have done more harm in the world is perhaps an open question, which I leave to the historians for settlement.

The other type of the overconscientious does definite harm to themselves. This type I have called the "Seekers of Perfection" and it is their affliction that they are miserable with anything less. They are particularly hard on themselves, differing in this wise from the by hyperæsthetic. Constantly they examine and reëxamine what they have done. "Is it the best I can do?" "Should I rest now; have I the right to rest?"

Into every moment of enjoyment they obtrude conscience, or rather conscience obtrudes itself. They become wedded to a purpose, and then that purpose becomes a tyrant allowing no escape, even for a brief pleasure, from its chains. Nothing is right that wastes any time; nothing is good but the best. The sense of humor is conspicuously lacking in this type, for one of the main functions of humor is to season effort and straining purpose with proportion.

Should one of these unfortunates be a housewife, then she is continually "picking up", continually pursuing that household Will-o'-the-Wisp, "finishing the work." For it is the nature of housework that it is never finished, no matter how much is done. This overconscientious person, unless she is made of steel springs and resilient rubber, breathlessly chasing this phantom all day and into the night, gives way under the strain, even though she have a dozen servants to help. For to this type each helper is not at all an aid. At once up goes the standard of what is to be done, and each servant becomes an added care, an added responsibility.

"I'd love to go out with you," wails this housewife, "but there's something I must finish to-day." The word must, self-imposed, becomes the mania of her life, to the open rebellion of her household. The word drives her to the real neglect of her husband, who becomes irritated at her constant and to him needless activity, coupled with her complaints.

"Why don't you rest if you are tired," is his stock remonstrance; "the house looks all right to me."

But it is futile. She becomes irritated, perhaps cries and says, "Just like a man. It's clean to you if there are no cobwebs on the walls."

Whereupon the debate closes, but the woman is the more deënergized and the man exasperated at the unreasonableness of women in general and his wife in particular.

It is probably true that woman has more conscience, in so far as detail is concerned, than man. She is more of a lover of order and neatness, more wedded to decorum. Man loves comfort and his interest is more specialized and analytical, and as a rule he hates fussiness.

This hatred of fussiness makes him long for the masculine clubroom, gives him the kind of uneasiness that sends him off on a fishing trip or hunting expedition. Further, and this is of great social importance, many a broken home, many an unexplainable triangle of the Wife, the Husband, and the Other Woman owes its existence, not to the charms of the other woman, but to the overconscientious wife.

The third type predisposed to the neurosis of the housewife is the overemotional woman.

We have already considered the effect of certain types of emotion on health and endurance and may formulate it as follows: Emotion may act as a great bodily disturbance, affecting every organ and every function of the body. What we call nervousness is largely made up of abnormal emotional response, of persistent emotion, of the blocking of energy by emotion.

Now people differ from the very start of life in their response to situations. One baby, if he does not get what he wants, turns his attention to something else, and another will cry for hours or until he gets it. One will manifest anger and strike at being blocked or impeded in his desires, and the other will implore and plead in a baby way for his wish.

In the face of difficulties one man shows fear and worry, another acts hastily and without premeditation, a third flares up in what we call a fighting spirit and seeks to batter down the resistance, and still a fourth becomes very active mentally, calling upon all of his past experience and seeking a definite plan to gain his end.

A loss, a deprivation, plunges one type of person into deepest sorrow, a helpless sorrow, inert and symbolic of the hopeless frustration of love. The same affliction striking at another man's heart makes him deeply and soberly reflective, and out of it there ensues a great philanthropy, a great memorial to his grief. For the one, sorrow has deënergized; for the other it has energized, has raised the efforts to a nobler plane.

Now there are women, and also men, to whom emotion acts like an overdose of a drug. Parenthetically, emotion and certain drugs have very similar effects. No matter how joyous the occasion and how exuberant their joy, a mood may settle into their lives like a fog and obscure everything. This mood may arise from the smallest disappointment; or a sudden vision of possible disaster to one they love may appear before them through some stray mental association. They are at the mercy of every sad memory and of every look into the future.

Preëminently, they are the victims of that form of chronic fear called worry, more aptly named by Fletcher "fearthought." He implied by this name that it was a sort of degenerated "forethought."

If the baby has a cough, then it may have tuberculosis or pneumonia or some disastrous illness, of which death is the commonest ending. How often is the doctor called in by these women and needlessly, and how she does keep his telephone busy! It is true that a cough may be early tuberculosis, but this is the