r own comforts outweighed all the
long and heavy sufferings of the others. Why should not their neighbors
continue miserable, when they had been miserable all their lives
hitherto? Those who, on the contrary, had been comfortable all their
lives, and liked it so much, ought to continue comfortable--even at
their expense. Why not let well alone? Or if people would be so
unreasonable as to want to be comfortable too, when nobody cared a straw
about them, let them make themselves comfortable without annoying those
superior beings who had been comfortable all the time!--Persons who,
consciously or unconsciously, reason thus, would do well to read with a
little attention the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, wherein it
seems recognized that a man's having been used to a thing may be just
the reason, not for the continuance, but for the alteration of his
condition. In the present case the person who most found himself
aggrieved, was the dishonest butcher. A piece of brick wall which the
minister had built in contact with the wall of his yard, would
indubitably cause such a rise in the water at the descent into the area
of his cellar, that, in order to its protection in a moderate flood--in
a great one the cellar was always filled--the addition to its defense of
two or three more rows of bricks would be required, carrying a
correspondent diminution of air and light. It is one of the punishments
overtaking those who wrong their neighbors, that not only do they feel
more keenly than others any injury done to themselves, but they take
many things for injuries that do not belong to the category. It was but
a matter of a few shillings at the most, but the man who did not scruple
to charge the less careful of his customers for undelivered ounces,
gathering to pounds and pounds of meat, resented bitterly the necessity
of the outlay. He knew, or ought to have known, that he had but to
acquaint the minister with the fact, to have the thing set right at
once; but the minister had found him out, and he therefore much
preferred the possession of his grievance to its removal. To his friends
he regretted that a minister of the gospel should be so corrupted by the
mammon of unrighteousness as to use it against members of his own
church: that, he said, was not the way to make friends with it. But on
the pretense of a Christian spirit, he avoided showing Mr. Drake any
sign of his resentment; for the face of his neighbors shames a man whose
h