tables; because, after
all, we must admit that the facts of life are on his side. It is not
intended that we shall be very comfortable. There is a terrible amount of
total depravity in animate and inanimate things. From morning till night
there is not an hour without its cross to carry. The weather thwarts us;
servants, landlords, drivers, washerwomen, and bosom friends misbehave;
clothes don't fit; teeth ache; stomachs get out of order; newspapers are
stupid; and children make too much noise. If there are not big troubles,
there are little ones. If they are not in sight, they are hiding. I have
wondered whether the happiest mortal could point to one single moment and
say, "At that moment there was nothing in my life which I would have had
changed." I think not.

In argument, therefore, the grumbler has the best of it. It is more than
probable that things are as he says. But why say it? Why make four
miseries out of three? If the three be already unbearable, so much the
worse. If he is uncomfortable, it is a pity; we are sorry, but we cannot
change the course of Nature. We shall soon have our own little turn of
torments, and we do not want to be worn out before it comes by having
listened to his; probably, too, the very things of which he complains are
pressing just as heavily on us as on him,--are just as unpleasant to
everybody as to him. Suppose everybody did as he does. Imagine, for
instance, a chorus of grumble from ten people at a breakfast-table, all
saying at once, or immediately after each other, "This coffee is not fit
to drink." "Really, the attendance in this house is insufferably poor." I
have sometimes wished to try this homoeopathic treatment in a bad case of
grumble. It sounds as if it might work a cure.

If you lose your temper with the grumbler, and turn upon him suddenly,
saying, "Oh, do not spoil all our pleasure. Do make the best of things:
or, at least, keep quiet!" then how aggrieved he is! how unjust he thinks
you are to "make a personal matter of it"! "You do not, surely, suppose I
think you are responsible for it, do you?" he says, with a lofty air of
astonishment at your unreasonable sensitiveness. Of course, we do not
suppose he thinks we are to blame; we do not take him to be a fool as well
as a grumbler. But he speaks to us, at us, before us, about the cause of
his discomfort, whatever it may be, precisely as he would if we were to
blame; and that is one thing which makes his grumbling so i