ways charged with a multitude of vices. The winds are
everlastingly perverse, either too high or too low, blowing dust in
everybody's face, or not fanning them as they should. The earth is ever
out of humor, too dry or too wet, too muddy or dusty. And the people are
just about like it. Something is wrong all the time, and the wrong is
always just about them. Their home is the worst of anybody's; their
street and their neighborhood is the most unpleasant to be found; nobody
else has so bad servants and so many annoyances as they. Their lot is
harder than falls to common mortals; they have to work harder and always
did; have less and always expect to. They have seen more trouble than
other folks know any thing about. They are never so well as their
neighbors, and they always charge all their unhappiness upon those
nearest connected with them, never dreaming that they are themselves the
authors of it all. Such people are to be pitied. Of all the people in
the world they deserve most our compassion. They are good people in many
respects, very benevolent, very conscientious, very pious, but, withal,
very annoying to themselves and others. As a general rule, their
goodness makes them more difficult to cure of their evil. They can not
be led to see that they are at fault. Knowing their virtues they can
not see their faults. They do not perhaps over-estimate their virtues,
but fail to see what they lack, and what they lack they charge upon
others, often upon those who love them best. They see others' actions
through the shadow of their own fretful and gloomy spirits. Hence it is
that they see their own faults as existing in those about them, as a
defect in the eye produces the appearance of a corresponding defect in
every object toward which it is turned. This defect in character is more
generally the result of vicious or improper habits of mind, than any
constitutional idiosyncrasy. It is the result of the indulgence of
gloomy thoughts, morbid fancies, inordinate ambition, habitual
melancholy, a complaining, fault-finding disposition. It is generally
early acquired, not in childhood, but in youth. Childhood is too
buoyant, fresh, and free for such indulgences. Early youth--when its
passions are developing, when the soul's bubbling springs are opening
fresh and warm, when young hopes put out, to be blighted with a shade,
young loves come to be disappointed with a frown, young desires aspire
to be saddened with the first failure--