Women’s looks depend too much on the state of their nerves and their peace of mind to pass them over. The body at best is the perfect expression of the soul. The latter may light wasted features to brilliance, or turn a face of milk and roses dark with passion or dead with dullness; it may destroy a healthy frame or support a failing one. Weak nerves may prove too much for the temper of St. John, and break down the courage of Saladin. Better things are before us, coming from a fuller appreciation of the needs of body and soul, but the fact remains that this is a generation of weak nerves. It shows particularly in the low tone of spirits common to men and women. They can not bear sunshine in their houses; they find the colors of Jacques Minot roses and of Gérome’s pictures too deep; the waltz in _Traviata_ is too brilliant, Rossini’s music is too sensuous, and Wagner’s too sensational; Mendelssohn is too light, Beethoven too cold. Their work is fuss; instead of resting, they idle--and there is a wide difference between the two things. People who drink strong tea and smoke too many cigars, read or stay in-doors too much, find the hum of creation too loud for them. The swell of the wind in the pines makes them gloomy, the sweep of the storm prostrates them with terror, the everlasting beating of the surf and the noises of the streets alike weary their worthless nerves. The happy cries of school-children at play are a grievance to them; indeed, there are people who find the chirp of the hearth cricket and the singing tea-kettle intolerable. But it is a sign of diseased nerves. Nature is full of noises, and only where death reigns is there silence. One wishes that the men and women who can’t bear a child’s voice, a singer’s practice, or the passing of feet up and down stairs might be transported to silence like that which wraps the poles or the spaces beyond the stars, till they could learn to welcome sound, without which no one lives.