r to smile like
the Cheshire Cat, when he did not feel particularly cheerful.

It is not, however, common to find people make such a frank and candid
confession of their superiority. The feeling is generally kept for more
or less private consumption. The underlying self-satisfaction generally
manifests itself, for instance, with people who have no real illusions,
say, about their personal appearance, in leading them to feel, after a
chance glance at themselves in a mirror, that they really do not look
so bad in certain lights. A dull preacher will repeat to himself, with
a private relish, a sentence out of a very commonplace discourse of his
own, and think that that was really an original thought, and that
he gave it an impressive emphasis; or a student will make a very
unimportant discovery, press it upon the attention of some great
authority on the subject, extort a half-hearted assent, and will then go
about saying, "I mentioned my discovery to Professor A----; he was
quite excited about it, and urged the immediate publication of it." Or
a commonplace woman will give a tea-party, and plume herself upon the
eclat with which it went off. The materials are ready to hand in any
life; the quality is not the same as priggishness, though it is closely
akin to it; it no doubt exists in the minds of many really successful
people, and if it is not flagrantly betrayed, it is often an important
constituent of their success. But the happy part of it is that the
dramatic sense is often freely bestowed upon the most inconspicuous and
unintelligent persons, and fills their lives with a consciousness of
romance and joy. It concerns itself mostly with public appearances, upon
however minute a scale, and thus it is a rich source of consolation and
self-congratulation. Even if it falls upon one who has no social gifts
whatever, whose circle of friends tends to diminish as life goes on,
whose invitations tend to decrease, it still frequently survives in a
consciousness of being profoundly interesting, and consoles itself by
believing that under different circumstances and in a more perceptive
society the fact would have received a wider recognition.

But, after all, as with many things, much depends upon the way that
illusions are cherished. When this dramatic sense is bestowed upon a
heavy-handed, imperceptive, egotistical person, it becomes a terrible
affliction to other people, unless indeed the onlooker possesses the
humorous specta