Feminine Occupations.--The occupations of women who stay at home are even more important than those of women who go out to work. In our time the root of much nervousness, as it is called, neurotic symptoms of various kinds and of many symptoms apparently quite distant from real nervousness, is really a lack of occupation. Many women who live in apartment hotels have almost nothing with which to occupy their minds. They are not obliged to get up in the morning if they do not want to, or, at least, any excuse, however slight, serves to keep them in bed. Very often there are either no children or the mother has nothing to do with her children early in the morning. After the age of three, they go off to kindergarten; later on they go to school. Breakfast is sent up, there may be a nap of an hour or two after the meal, and often a magazine is glanced over lying in bed, and perhaps it will be twelve o'clock before madame gets up. Anyone in a position to do this, and who allows the habit to grow, is sure to be profoundly {184} miserable. Without any real occupation of mind, the mind occupies itself with the body and emphasizes every sensation, evokes new pains and aches, and the consequence is likely to be a highly neurotic state. Such women have nothing serious to think about in the afternoon. At best it is a luncheon engagement with a friend, or attendance at the matinee, or a lecture, or a meeting of a club. For a while, and for a certain few, these things are satisfying, but after they have been indulged in for a time, they pall so completely on most people as to leave them almost helplessly at the mercy of their feelings. These persons may have some favorite charities that occupy part of their time. They may have other interests, but most of these interests are quite amateurish. They create no obligations; they arouse no sense of duty; they are abandoned at a moment for anything else that turns up, and consequently they lack that absorbing power that a real interest gives. It is quite impossible that these people should be either happy or healthy. These ladies of leisure sometimes have fads for physical exercise that keep them from becoming absolutely sluggish, but except in a few cases, these fads pall after a time, and in a few years women of the leisure classes are generally without any interest that will save them from themselves. The root of many a case of nervousness that wanders from physician to physician and then from quack to quack, and from charlatan of one kind to charlatan of another kind, that takes up now this remedy and now that, and advertises each new method of healing--mental, hypnotic, mechanical--is due to nothing more serious than lack of proper occupation of mind.