the Charing Cross
Hospital tied up my small injury, and I went out again into the Strand.
I felt upon me even a kind of unnatural youth; I hungered for something
untried. So to open a new chapter in my life I got into a hansom cab.

VII. The Advantages of Having One Leg

A friend of mine who was visiting a poor woman in bereavement and
casting about for some phrase of consolation that should not be either
insolent or weak, said at last, "I think one can live through these
great sorrows and even be the better. What wears one is the little
worries." "That's quite right, mum," answered the old woman with
emphasis, "and I ought to know, seeing I've had ten of 'em." It is,
perhaps, in this sense that it is most true that little worries are most
wearing. In its vaguer significance the phrase, though it contains a
truth, contains also some possibilities of self-deception and error.
People who have both small troubles and big ones have the right to say
that they find the small ones the most bitter; and it is undoubtedly
true that the back which is bowed under loads incredible can feel a
faint addition to those loads; a giant holding up the earth and all
its animal creation might still find the grasshopper a burden. But I
am afraid that the maxim that the smallest worries are the worst is
sometimes used or abused by people, because they have nothing but the
very smallest worries. The lady may excuse herself for reviling the
crumpled rose leaf by reflecting with what extraordinary dignity she
would wear the crown of thorns--if she had to. The gentleman may permit
himself to curse the dinner and tell himself that he would behave much
better if it were a mere matter of starvation. We need not deny that
the grasshopper on man's shoulder is a burden; but we need not pay much
respect to the gentleman who is always calling out that he would rather
have an elephant when he knows there are no elephants in the country. We
may concede that a straw may break the camel's back, but we like to know
that it really is the last straw and not the first.

I grant that those who have serious wrongs have a real right to grumble,
so long as they grumble about something else. It is a singular fact that
if they are sane they almost always do grumble about something else. To
talk quite reasonably about your own quite real wrongs is the quickest
way to go off your head. But people with great troubles talk about
little ones, and the man who compla