and sleeping, with much too regular smoking,
are the cause of half the melancholy
poetry and cynical prose with which we are
inundated. Also of many a miserable home,
hiding its miseries under the decent decorum
which society has the good taste and good feeling
to abstain from prying too closely into; and
of not a few open scandals, bankruptcies, and
divorce cases. If a modern edition of the
Miseries of Human Life were to be written, the
author might well trace them to that unsanitary
condition, first of body and then of mind, into
which civilisation, or the luxurious extreme of
it, has brought us, and upon which some of us
rather pride ourselves, as if it were a grand
thing to be " morbid;" quite forgetting the
origin of the word, and that such a condition,
whether mental or physical, or both combined,
is, in truth, not life, but the beginning of death,
to every human being.

And suppose it is so. Granted that I am a
man with " nerves," or " liver," or any other
permanent ailment, ain I to make my ill-used
and consequently ill-conducted interior a
nuisance to all my family and friends? Did no
man's head ever ache but mine? Is no one else
blessed (or cursed) with a too sensitive organism,
obliged to struggle with and control it, and at
least contrive that it shall trouble others as
little as possible? Why should my wife,
sister, or daughter be expected to bestow
unlimited sympathy upon every small suffering of
mine, while she hides many an ache and pain
which I never even know of, or, knowing,
should scarcely heed, except so far as it affected
my own personal comfort, or because it is a
certain annoyance to me that anybody should
require sympathy but myself? Have my
friends no anxieties of their own that I should
be for ever laying upon them the burden of
mine—always exacting and requiting nothing?
People like a fair balance — a cheery give and
take in the usefulnesses as well as the pleasantnesses
of life. Is it wonderful, then, that, after
a time, they a little shrink from me, are shy
of asking me to dinner? — at least, often.
For they feel I may be a cloud upon the social
board; my moods are so various, they never
know how to take me. They are very sorry
for me, very kind to me, but, in plain English,
they would rather have my room than my company.
I am too full of myself ever to be any
pleasure or benefit to others.

For it is a curious fact that the most self-
contained natures are always the least self-
engrossed; and those to whom everybody
applies for help, most seldom ask or require it.
The centre sun of every family, round which
the others instinctively revolve, is sure to be a
planet bright and fixed, carrying its light within
itself. But a man whose soul is all darkness,
or who is at best a poor wandering star, eager
to kindle his puny candle at somebody else's
beams, can be a light and a blessing to nobody.

And he may be — probably without intending
it — quite the opposite. Who does not, in visiting
a household, soon discover the one who
contributes nothing to the happiness of the
rest, who is a sort of eleemosynary pensioner
on everybody's forbearance, living, as beggars
do, by the continual exhibition of his sores, and
often getting sympathy — as beggars get
halfpence —just to be rid of him? Who does not
recognise the person whose morning step upon
the stair, so far from having " music in 't,"
sends a premonitory shiver, and even a dead
silence, round the cheerful, chattering breakfast-
table?— whose departure to business, or
elsewhere, causes a sudden rise in the domestic
barometer? — nay, whose very quitting a room
gives a sense of relief as of a cloud lifted off?
Yet he may have many good qualities, but they
are all obscured and rendered useless by the
incessant recurrence to and absorption in self,
which is the root of all his useless woes. And,
alas! while believing himself — as he wishes to
be—the most important person in his circle, our
miserable friend fills really the lowest place
therein — that of the one whom nobody trusts,
nobody leans upon; whom everybody has to
help, but who is never expected to help anybody.
How could he? for in him is lacking the very
foundation of all helpfulness — the strong, brave,
cheerful spirit which, under all circumstances,
will throw itself out of itself sufficiently to
understand and be of use to its neighbour.

Truly, as regards usefulness, one might as
well attempt to labour in an unlighted coal
mine as to do one's work in the world in an
atmosphere of perpetual gloom. Nature
herself scorns the idea. Some of her operations
are carried on in tender temporary shadow—
but only temporary. Nothing with her is
permanently dark, except the corruption of the
grave. Wherever, in any man's temperament,
is incurable sadness, morbid melancholy, be sure
there is something also corrupt; something which
shrinks from the light because it needs to be
hid; something diseased, in body or mind, which,
so far from being petted and indulged and
glossed over with poetical fancies, needs to be
rooted out — with a hand, gentle, indeed, but
strong and firm as that of the good surgeon, who
deals deliberately present pain for future good.

A healthy temperament, though not insensible
to sorrow, never revels in it or is
subdued by it; it accepts it, endures it, and then
looks round for the best mode of curing it.
We cannot too strongly impress on the rising
generation—who, like the young bears, have
all their troubles before them — that suffering is
not a normal but an abnormal state; and that
to believe otherwise is to believe that this world
is a mere chaos of torment made for the amusement
of the omnipotent — not God, but devil—
who rules it. Pain must exist — for some inscrutable
end—inseparable from the present
economy of the world; but we ought, out of
common sense and common justice, and
especially religion, to regard it not as the law of
our lives, but as an accident, usually resulting
from our breaking that law. We cannot wholly
prevent suffering, but we can guard against it, in
degree; and we never need wholly succumb to