It is really much the same with excitable women as with a man who thinks he must always keep a little stimulant in himself in order to keep about his work. When a bad habit is established in us we feel unnatural if we give the habit up for a moment--and we feel natural when we are in it--but it is poison all the same. If a woman has a habit of constantly snuffing or clearing her throat, or rocking a rocking chair, or chattering to whoever may be near her she would feel unnatural and weird if she were suddenly wrenched out of any of these things. And yet the poisoning process goes on just the same. When it seems immaterial to us that we should be natural we are in a pretty bad way and the worst of it is we do not know it. I once took a friend with me into the country who was one of those women who lived on excitement in every-day life. When she dressed in the morning she dressed in excitement. She went down to breakfast in excitement. She went about the most humdrum everyday affairs excited. Every event in life--little or big--was an excitement to her--and she went to bed tired out with excitement--over nothing. We went deep in the woods and in the mountains, full of great powerful quiet. When my friend first got there she was excited about her arrival, she was excited about the house and the people in it, but in the middle of the night she jumped up in bed with a groan of torture. I thought she had been suddenly taken ill and started up quickly from my end of the room to see what was the trouble. "Oh, oh," she groaned, "the quiet! It is so quiet!" Her brain which had been in a whirl of petty excitement felt keen pain when the normal quiet touched it. Fortunately this woman had common sense and I could gradually explain the truth to her, and she acted upon it and got rested and strong and quiet. I knew another woman who had been wearing shoes that were too tight for her and that pinched her toes all together. The first time she wore shoes that gave her feet room enough the muscles of her feet hurt her so that she could hardly walk. Of course, having been cramped into abnormal contraction the process of expanding to freedom would be painful. If you had held your fist clenched tight for years, or months, or even weeks, how it would hurt to open it so that you could have free use of your fingers. The same truth holds good with a fist that has been clenched, a foot that has been pinched, or a brain that has been contracted with excitement. The process leading from the abnormal to the normal is always a painful one. To stay in the abnormal means blindness, constantly limiting power and death. To come out into a normal atmosphere and into a normal way of living means clearer sight, constantly increasing power, and fresh life.