s woman told me
later what it was that had taken away her appetite she added: "And
isn't it absurd? Why shouldn't Mrs. Smith eat sugar on baked beans? It
does not hurt me. I do not have to taste the sugar on the beans; but is
it such an odd thing to do. It seems to me such bad manners that I just
get so mad I can't eat!"

Now, could there be anything more absurd than that? To see a woman
annoyed; to see her recognize that she was uselessly and foolishly
annoyed, and yet to see that she makes not the slightest effort to get
over her annoyance.

It is like the woman who discovered that she spoke aloud in church, and
was so surprised that she exclaimed: "Why, I spoke out loud in church!"
and then, again surprised, she cried: "Why, I keep speaking aloud in
church!"--and it did not occur to her to stop.

My friend would have refused an invitation to supper, I truly believe,
if she had known that Mrs. Smith would be there and her hostess would
have baked beans. She was really a slave to Mrs. Smith's way of eating
baked beans.

"Well, I do not blame her," I hear some reader say; "it is entirely out
of place to eat sugar on baked beans. Why shouldn't she be annoyed?"

I answer: "Why should she be annoyed? Will her annoyance stop Mrs.
Smith's eating sugar on baked beans? Will she in any way--selfish or
otherwise--be the gainer for her annoyance? Furthermore, if it were the
custom to eat sugar on baked beans, as it is the custom to put sugar in
coffee, this woman would not have been annoyed at all. It was simply
the fact of seeing Mrs. Smith digress from the ordinary course of life
that annoyed her."

It is the same thing that makes a horse shy. The horse does not say to
himself, "There is a large carriage, moving with no horse to pull it,
with nothing to push it, with--so far as I can see--no motive power at
all. How weird that is! How frightful!"--and, with a quickly beating
heart, jump aside and caper in scared excitement. A horse when he first
sees an automobile gets an impression on his brain which is entirely
out of his ordinary course of impressions--it is as if some one
suddenly and unexpectedly struck him, and he shies and jumps. The horse
is annoyed, but he does not know what it is that annoys him. Now, when
a horse shies you drive him away from the automobile and quiet him
down, and then, if you are a good trainer, you drive him back again
right in front of that car or some other one, and you repeat the
process