I hardly think the word is employed by
lexicographers with this meaning, and I apologize for using the
expression; but this kind of an odd spell is what I call _smudging_.
It seems so strange that a girl can use her will so powerfully about
controlling others, and yet remain herself the dupe of an unkind mood.
To be sure, there are causes for ill-humor arising nearly every day,--
ill-health, poverty, sorrow, cares that haunt and harrow, unaccomplished
desires, ungratified longings; but the indulgence of dejection, the
lack of resistance to a mood, only increase hardship. How is the doctor
to help your body, if you do not help your spirits? How are your
surroundings to be improved, if you do not go to work? How are you
to get work, if you do not seek it, and try with all your might to
find it? How is trouble to be lessened or endured, if from it we do
not reach to higher, nobler living? The way out of trouble is not
through despair. Hope unlocks the temple doors, Despair rusts the keys.
Each must know her own anxieties best; but the trials of all, we shall
sometime see, are but bitter on the outside, sweet and nourishing
within. Believe in the _sometime_.
IX.
WOMANLINESS.
There is something in woman fascinating to woman herself, and something
in a girl irresistibly attractive to a girl herself. Mere words being
unsufficient to express the emotion caused by this charm, a girl makes
use of a large force of ejaculations, utters her indescribable "Oh's!"
and "Ah's!" in every variety of crescendo and diminuendo, and emphasizes
her pitch with gestures that point her meaning, till not the slightest
doubt exists that she has been impressed by something wonderful.
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