s not see that it is custom alone which
varnishes wrong with a slimy coat of respectability, and glorifies
selfishness with the aureole of sacrifice. It sets down all collisions
as foreordained, and never observes that they occur because people will
not smooth off their angles, but sharpen them, and not only sharpen
them, but run them into you. It forgets that the Lord made man upright,
but he hath sought out many inventions. It attributes all the collision
and inaptitude which it finds to the nature of things, and never
suspects that the Devil goes around in the night, thrusting the square
men into the round places, and the round men into the square places.
It never notices that the reason why the rope does not unwind easily is
because one strand is a world too large, and another a world too small,
and so it sticks where it ought to roll, and rolls where it ought to
stick. It makes sweet, faint efforts, with tender fingers and
palpitating heart to oil the wheels and polish up the machine, and does
not for a moment imagine that the hitch is owing to original
incompatibility of parts and purposes, that the whole machine must be
pulled to pieces and made over, and that nothing will be done by
standing patiently by, trying to sooth away the creaking and wheezing
and groaning of the laboring, lumbering thing, by laying on a little
drop of sweet oil with a pin-feather. As it does not see any of these
things that are happening before its eyes, of course it is shallowly
happy. And on the other hand, he who does see them, and is not
amiable, is grimly and Grendally happy. He likes to say disagreeable
things, and all this dismay and disaster scatter disagreeable things
broadcast along his path, so that all he has to do is to pick them up
and say them. Therefore this world is his paradise. He would not know
what to do with himself in a world where matters were sorted and folded
and laid away ready for you when you should want them. He likes to see
human affairs mixing themselves up in irretrievable confusion. If he
detects a symptom of straightening, it shall go hard but he will thrust
in his own fingers and snarl a thread or two. He is delighted to find
dogged duty and eager desire butting each other. All the irresistible
forces crashing against all the immovable bodies give him no shock,
only a pleasant titillation. He is never so happy as when men are
taking hold of things by the blade, and cutting their hands, and los