What shall one say to the moody girl? Shall one not tell her to face life cheerily? There has never been known a year of nights on every one of which the stars shone, but no more has there ever been known a year of nights on not one of which the stars shone. The moody girl takes life as if all her years of days had been years of nights, and as if on not one of these nights the stars had shone. She has much to learn, this chiefly, that there are compensations for almost everything. “Look at my teeth,” so said a moody girl to a German philosopher, “look at my teeth, and I am a singer.” [Illustration: _Good sound_ teeth] Her teeth were large and protruding. “Those teeth are good for a singer,” said the German philosopher. Envy—this thing may not be said aloud, but it may be said in a whisper to the moody girl—is at the bottom of much self-made misery. The cry of Shakespeare’s Helena is the cry of many Helenas. “How happy some o’er other some can be!” This, too, is true of the moody girl. She is pre-eminently a faultfinder. In this she is the more to blame that they who find fault are they who seek fault. She is lavish of her censure and is chary of her praise. She should be told what a Frenchwoman has said— “’Tis in a sort to participate in good deeds to praise them.” In the Frenchwoman’s language, “_C’est en quelque sorte se donner aux belles actions que de les louer._” The suppositions of a moody girl are sometimes singular. “I suppose,” says one Sybil, “any of us could remember six unpleasant circumstances in our lives more easily than six pleasant.” This Sybil it was who cited to her father the famous line regarding “the loud laugh,” and who learnt from him that the loud groan shows every whit as much “the vacant mind.” What makes for moodiness? A life of ease according to the poet to whom belongs the phrase “stretched on the rack of a too-easy chair.” The rich girl who wishes she was poor is full as common as the poor girl who wishes she was rich. Her brother does not spare the moody girl. Sometimes his gibes are stupid; once in a while they are fairly clever. As boy’s satire, what follows appears to me rather good. “Any baby can put its finger in its eye and cry.” As girl’s satire, what next follows—being the speech of a girl not moody on the subject of a moody girl—is excellent. “She is one of those people who always bring up miserable subjects and—sympathise.” [Illustration: A HINT _The pathetic onion as a studio property_] A rather common type of moody person is that composed of girls who not only themselves wear habitually a dolorous expression, but who admire this expression on the faces of others. I sat to such a girl once for my portrait. She surprised me by her variant of the photographer’s familiar request. “Will you,” she said mellifluously, “please try to think of something—unpleasant?” I tried my hardest and succeeded, within the limitations set to Irishwomen.