grumblers; they are never done. Such
sons of Belial are they to this day that no man can speak peaceably unto
them. They are as much worse than passionate people as a slow drizzle of
rain is than a thunder-storm. For the thunder-storm, you stay in-doors,
and you cannot help having pleasure in its sharp lights and darks and
echoes; and when it is over, what clear air, what a rainbow! But in the
drizzle, you go out; you think that with a waterproof, an umbrella, and
overshoes, you can manage to get about in spite of it, and attend to your
business. What a state you come home in,--muddy, limp, chilled,
disheartened! The house greets you, looking also muddy and cold,--for the
best of front halls gives up in despair and cannot look any thing but
forlorn in a long, drizzling rain; all the windows are bleared with
trickling, foggy wet on the outside, which there is no wiping off nor
seeing through, and if one could see through there is no gain. The street
is more gloomy than the house; black, slimy mud, inches deep on crossings;
the same black, slimy mud in footprints on side-walks; hopeless-looking
people hurrying by, so unhappy by reason of the drizzle that a weird sort
of family likeness is to be seen in all their faces. This is all that can
be seen outside. It is better not to look. For the inside is no redemption
except a wood-fire,--a good, generous wood-fire,--not in any of the modern
compromises called open stoves, but on a broad stone hearth, with a big
background of chimney, up which the sparks can go skipping and creeping.

This can redeem a drizzle; but this cannot redeem a grumbler. Plump he
sits down in the warmth of its very blaze, and complains that it snaps,
perhaps, or that it is oak and maple, when he paid for all hickory. You
can trust him to put out your wood-fire for you as effectually as a
water-spout. And, if even a wood-fire, bless it! cannot outshine the gloom
of his presence, what is to happen in the places where there is no
wood-fire, on the days when real miseries, big and little, are on hand, to
be made into mountains of torture by his grumbling? Oh, who can describe
him? There is no language which can do justice to him; no supernatural
foresight which can predict where his next thrust will fall, from what
unsuspected corner he will send his next arrow. Like death, he has all
seasons for his own; his ingenuity is infernal. Whoever tries to forestall
or appease him might better be at work in Augean s