The Nervous Strain
"Which fiddle-strings is weakness to expredge my nerves this night."—Mrs. Gamp.
ANNA ROBESON BURR, in her scholarly analysis of the world's great autobiographies, has found occasion to compare the sufferings of the American woman under the average conditions of life with the endurance of the woman who, three hundred years ago, confronted dire vicissitudes with something closely akin to insensibility. "Today," says Mrs. Burr, "a child's illness, an over-gay season, the loss of an investment, a family jar,—these are accepted as sufficient cause for over-strained nerves and temporary retirement to a sanitarium. Then, war, rapine, fire, sword, prolonged and mortal peril, were considered as furnishing no excuse to men or women for altering the habits, or slack-
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