NERVOUS PEOPLE.
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erves—weak nerves, excitable nerves, unstrung nerves,—what an absurdity they appear to granite minds and iron frames! Muscles, bones, and sinews are hard realities; but nerves have only a vapory and unsubstantial existence, in the estimation of men and women of nerve. Very paradoxical in sound, but not less veritable! You remind them that through these delicate conductors the sovereign brain transmits its will to the subject body, and they gravely admit that nerves are actually the fine, intangible media of this vital communion; but try to convince them that the disturbance of the electric current conveyed through the channel of the nerves produces that painful condition styled nervousness, and they start back to their former skeptical standpoint, and maintain that nerves are imaginary nuisances, and that nervousness is merely the fanciful, hypochondriacal state to which feeble intellects are prone. Consequently, all phases of nervousness excite in these insensate unbelievers impatience, ridicule, or anger.
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