's heart, on the ground of being themselves pricked by a straw.
Now see if it isn't so. What, after all, is a good temper but
generosity in trifles--and what, without it, is the happiness of life?
We have only to look round us. I _saw_ a woman, once, burst into
tears, because her husband cut the bread and butter too thick. I saw
_that_ with my own eyes. Was it _sensibility_, I wonder! They were at
least real tears and ran down her cheeks. 'You _always_ do it'! she
said.

Why how you must sympathize with the heroes and heroines of the French
romances (_do_ you sympathize with them very much?) when at the
slightest provocation they break up the tables and chairs, (a degree
beyond the deeds of my childhood!--_I_ only used to upset them) break
up the tables and chairs and chiffoniers, and dash the china to atoms.
The men _do_ the furniture, and the women the porcelain: and pray
observe that they always set about this as a matter of course! When
they have broken everything in the room, they sink down quite (and
very naturally) _abattus_. I remember a particular case of a hero of
Frederic Soulie's, who, in the course of an 'emotion,' takes up a
chair _unconsciously_, and breaks it into very small pieces, and then
proceeds with his soliloquy. Well!--the clearest idea this excites in
_me_, is of the low condition in Paris, of moral government and of
upholstery. Because--just consider for yourself--how _you_ would
succeed in breaking to pieces even a three-legged stool if it were
properly put together--as stools are in England--just yourself,
without a hammer and a screw! You might work at it _comme quatre_, and
find it hard to finish, I imagine. And then as a demonstration, a
child of six years old might demonstrate just so (in his sphere) and
be whipped accordingly.

How I go on writing!--and you, who do not write at all!--two extremes,
one set against the other.

But I must say, though in ever such an ill temper (which you know is
just the time to select for writing a panegyric upon good temper) that
I am glad you do not despise my own right name too much, because I
never was called Elizabeth by any one who loved me at all, and I
accept the omen. So little it seems my name that if a voice said
suddenly 'Elizabeth,' I should as soon turn round as my sisters would
... no sooner. Only, my own right name has been complained of for want
of euphony ... _Ba_ ... now and then it has--and Mr. Boyd makes a
compromise and calls me _