When I was myself a sufferer from long nervous depression, and had to face a social gathering, I used out of very shame, and partly I think out of a sense of courtesy due to others, to galvanise myself into a sort of horrid merriment.  The dark tide flowed on beneath in its sore and aching channels.  It was common enough then for some sympathetic friend to say, “You seemed better to-night—­you were quite yourself; that is what you want; if you would only make the effort and go out more into society, you would soon forget your troubles.”  There is something in it, because the sick mind must be persuaded if possible not to grave its dolorous course too indelibly in the temperament; but no one else could see the acute and intolerable reaction which used to follow such a strain, or how, the excitement over, the suffering resumed its sway over the exhausted self with an insupportable agony.  I am sure that in my long affliction I never suffered more than after occasions when I was betrayed by excitement into argument or lively talk, and the worst spasms of melancholy that I ever endured were the direct and immediate results of such efforts.

The counteracting force in fact must be an emotional and instinctive one, not a rational and deliberate one; and this must be our next endeavour, to see in what direction the counterpoise must lie.

In depression then, and when causeless fears assail us, we must try to put the mind in easier postures, to avoid excess and strain, to live more in company, to do something different.  Human beings are happiest in monotony and settled ways of life; but these also develop their own poisons, like sameness of diet, however wholesome it may be.  It is, I believe, an established fact that most people cannot eat a pigeon a day for fourteen days in succession; a pigeon is not unwholesome, but the digestion cannot stand iteration.  There is an old and homely story of a man who went to a great doctor suffering from dyspepsia.  The doctor asked him what he ate, and he said that he always lunched off bread and cheese.  “Try a mutton chop,” said the doctor.  He did so with excellent results.  A year later he was ill again and went to the same doctor, who put him through the same catechism.  “What do you have for luncheon?” said the doctor.  “A chop,” said the patient, conscious of virtuous obedience.  “Try bread and cheese,” said the doctor.  “Why,” said the patient, “that was the very thing you told me to avoid.”  “Yes,” said the doctor, “and I tell you to avoid a chop now.  You, are suffering not from diet, but from monotony of diet—­and you want a change.”