But if the mind and habits of life can be brought under control, so as to take part in ordinary affairs without attracting attention or having exemptions and allowance made for them, a result of a far higher order will have been attained.
To recognize eccentricity as selfishness is a first step to its cure, and to make oneself serviceable to others is the simplest corrective.
Whatever else they may be, "eccentrics" are not generally serviceable.
Children of vivid imagination, nervously excitable and fragile in constitution, rather easily fall into little eccentric ways which grow very rapidly and are hard to overcome.

One of the commonest of these is talking to themselves.

Sitting still, making efforts to apply their minds to lessons for more than a short time, accentuates the tendency by nerve fatigue.

In reaction against fatigue the mind falls into a vacant state and that is the best condition for the growth of eccentricities and other mental troubles.

If their attention is diverted from themselves, and yet fixed with the less exhausting concentration which belongs to manual work, this diversion into another channel, with its accompany bodily movement, will restore the normal balance, and the little eccentric pose will be forgotten; this is better than being noticed and laughed at and formally corrected.
Manual employments, especially if varied, and household occupations afford a great variety, give to children a sense of power in knowing what to do in a number of circumstances; they take pleasure in this, for it is a thing which they admire in others.