Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1891 — If I Were a Girl. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

If I Were a Girl.

I would take care of my health, by living out-doors as much as possible, and taking long walks in the sunshine. English girls understand how necessary this is for good complexions and cheerful spirits. Wear simple clothing, that you may climb mountains and breathe freely. I would secure the best education. Go to college* by all means, if it is possible. A woman, in these days, if she would be attractive as well as useful, must be intelligent. Educated men need educated wives. Children need educated mothers. Women themselves need a broad education, lest their thoughts become centered in clothes or in the small round of society gossip which belittles. Bead good books and thereby become intelligent. I would cultivate cheerfulness. Discontent soon shows itself in the face. If you have some disappointments, so do others. If you are cramped for money, be thankful that your lot is no worse than it is. Learn to make the best of things. An unhappy woman is a perpetual cloud in a home. A fretful girl has few friends, and the number lessens year by year. I would say kind things of others, especially of girls. A girl who makes unkind remarks about other girls had better be avoided by young men. She will not make an agreeable companion for life. I would learn how to be self-sup-porting. Especially in this country, where fortunes change, it is wise for a woman to be able to care for herself. Helpless women are not a comfort to others, and usually are not to themselves. I would try to be polite everywhere. True courtesy is more winsome than a pretty face or fine dress. Loud talk or loud dress does not betoken the lady. Be appreciative and sympathetic, and you have two keys which will unlock almost all hearts. I would learn self-control. To snow when to speak and when to be silent, to have hateful things said about you and be able to answer pleasantly, to have people confide in pou and be wise enough to keep it locked in your own heart, to he in poverty and not be soured by it, to meet temptation and be strong before it, to be strong enough to perform any labor or duty that needs to be done all this shows a noble mastery over tels. I would be punctual. Being late

at meals, late at church, or late In meeting engagements makes unnecessary friction in families. If we are willing to to® valuable time, we have no right to make others lose it. I would not be careless about the affections. Girls too ofteii think that young men are not easily hurt in love matters, or if they are, they soon recover. As a rule, probably, men love as deeply as women, and to play with hearts is a sin. I have known girls engaged to two young men at the same time, thoughtless as to the effect upon those whom they could not marry. It is a pitiful thing to spoil a life, and it is not infrequently done. The golden rule oi doing unto others as we would that they should do unto us is especially applicable here.—Sarah K. Bolton, in Hearth and Hall.

Some persons are born with a normal tendency to become fat, others with a tendency to leanness. It is the same among the lower animals. The hog is a sort of machine for transforming the odds and ends of food into fat; but the farmer knows beforehand that a little pig with long legs and snout will work off the fat as fast as it can be made. So a; longlegged person seldom ibclines to obesity. Temperament has much to do with the bodily condition in this respect. In lymphatic people the life processes are slow, and the fat is largely deposited, rather than burned. This temperament furnishes some of the best types of surface-beauty. The person of nervous temperament, on the other hand, by excessiye activity of body and mind, and by predisposition to haste, worry, fret and impatience, naturally remains lean; but while the features of such a person will probably lack softness and roundness of outline, they may exhibit in a marked degree the higher beauties of mind and soul.

People who incline to obesity may hold the tendency in check by appropriate food and stirring exercise in the open air, thus both lessening the amount of fat-forming food taken into the system, and causing a more rapid consumption of such fat as is produced; and those who incline to undue leanness, by pursuing the opposite course, may largely increase the amount of fat deposited. If the leanness is the result of digestive weakness, or of a faulty assimilation, little, of course, can be done until a condition of general health has been secured. But assuming that the abnormal leanness is connected with high health, what advice must be given? First, let the carbonaceous, or fatforming, food greatly preponderate over the nitrogenous—such as beef, lamb and codfish. Calling the fatfbrming elements of beef twenty, lamb thirty-five, and codfish five, those of pork will be fifty; beans, fifty-seven; peas, sixty; oats, sixtysix; wheat, sixty-nine; corn and rye, each seventy-two, rice, eighty, and butter, one hundred. Of course it would not do to take a single carbonaceous article and live on it, for the entire body is to be kept in high health by the proper nourishment of all the tissues. However, the system cam be well supported in full vigor by a vegetable diet, with the addition of milk, eggs and butter. In the second place, cultivate calmness and quietness in feeling and. manner. Avoid impatience and fret. Do not overwork with mind or body. We may add that tea-drinking tends to leanness. If possible, milk should be substituted.—Youth’s Companion.

Leanness.