be summed up all the aggravation of living. The bane of my life has
been never being let alone. People seem to think they have come into the
world with a special mission to give me advice, and from my babyhood up,
I have never been allowed to carry out the best-arranged plan of
operation, without interference. As each man and woman is the
representative of a certain class, I conclude others have had the same
experience with myself; and there is a gloomy satisfaction in reflecting
that there are many who have been made as essentially uncomfortable as
I. The result has been, I have come to the unalterable determination
never, under any circumstances, to either advise anybody or receive it
myself where it can be avoided. If it is ordained that I am to make a
fool of myself, it shall be done on my own responsibility, and not with
the assistance of meddling friends--though if they have any desire to
take the credit of it, I shall make no objections whatever. I doubt if
they will. The longer I live in the world, the clearer appears the fact
that half at least of our unhappiness is unnecessary. We seem perversely
bent on tormenting and being tormented. We visit people for whom we do
not care one straw, because our position in society or our interests
demand it. We sacrifice our own judgment to the whims of others as a
matter of expediency, and almost ignore our own capacity in the
eagerness to agree with everybody. We suffer because a rich snob snubs
us, and agonize over unfavorable remarks made concerning our abilities
or standing. These things ought not so to be. No man can find a
substitute when he lies a-dying;--why should all his years be spent in
the vain endeavor to find a substitute for living? An endless dependence
upon the opinions, the whims, the prejudices of others, is the bane of
living, and the mark of a weak mind, made so oftener by education than
nature.

When the young forget to abuse the old, and the old to run down the
young; when mothers-in-law cease to hate their daughters-in-law, and to
improve all opportunities for sowing strife; when wives take pains to
understand their husbands, and husbands decide that woman nature is
worth studying; when women can remember to be charitable to other women;
when the Golden Rule can be read as it is written, and not 'Do unto
others as ye would _not_ they should do unto you;' when justice and
truth rule men, rather than unreason and petty spite, then the
aggravation of