y. If
man could make his ideal climate he would probably be dissatisfied with
it in a month. The effect of climate upon disposition and upon manners
needs to be considered some day; but we are now only trying to understand
the attractiveness of the disagreeable. There must be some reason for it;
and that would explain a social phenomenon, why there are so many
unattractive people, and why the attractive readers of these essays could
not get on without them.

The writer of this once traveled for days with an intelligent curmudgeon,
who made himself at all points as prickly as the porcupine. There was no
getting on with him. And yet when he dropped out of the party he was
sorely missed. He was more attractively repulsive than the sea-lion. It
was such a luxury to hate him. He was such a counter-irritant, such a
stimulant; such a flavor he gave to life. We are always on the lookout
for the odd, the eccentric, the whimsical. We pretend that we like the
orderly, the beautiful, the pleasant. We can find them anywhere--the
little bits of scenery that please the eye, the pleasant households, the
group of delightful people. Why travel, then? We want the abnormal, the
strong, the ugly, the unusual at least. We wish to be startled and
stirred up and repelled. And we ought to be more thankful than we are
that there are so many desolate and wearisome and fantastic places, and
so many tiresome and unattractive people in this lovely world.

GIVING AS A LUXURY

There must be something very good in human nature, or people would not
experience so much pleasure in giving; there must be something very bad
in human nature, or more people would try the experiment of giving. Those
who do try it become enamored of it, and get their chief pleasure in life
out of it; and so evident is this that there is some basis for the idea
that it is ignorance rather than badness which keeps so many people from
being generous. Of course it may become a sort of dissipation, or more
than that, a devastation, as many men who have what are called "good
wives" have reason to know, in the gradual disappearance of their
wardrobe if they chance to lay aside any of it temporarily. The amount
that a good woman can give away is only measured by her opportunity. Her
mind becomes so trained in the mystery of this pleasure that she
experiences no thrill of delight in giving away only the things her
husband does not want. Her office in life is to teach him the joy