of excesses, injustices, scandals, frauds; it seeks to
destroy sin, and to correct the sinner. It is often not only a
privilege, but a duty. It supposes, naturally, judgment, prudence, and
discretion, and excludes all selfish motives.

Zeal in an inferior and more common degree is called indignation, and
is directed against all things unworthy, low and deserving of contempt.
It respects persons, but loathes whatever of sin or vice that is in, or
comes from, unworthy beings. It is a virtue, and is the effect of a
high sense of respectability.

Impatience is not anger, but a feeling somewhat akin to it, provoked by
untoward events and inevitable happenings, such as the weather,
accidents, etc. It is void of all spirit of revenge. Peevishness is
chronic impatience, due to a disordered nervous system and requires the
services of a competent physician, being a physical, not moral,
distemper.

Anger is a weakness and betrays many other weaknesses; that is why
sensible people never allow this passion to sway them. It is the last
argument of a lost cause: "You are angry, therefore you are wrong." The
great misery of it is that hot-tempered people consider their mouths to
be safety-valves, while the truth is that the wagging tongue generates
bile faster than the open mouth can give exit to it. St. Liguori
presented an irate scold with a bottle, the contents to be taken by the
mouthful and held for fifteen minutes, each time her lord and master
returned home in his cups. She used it with surprising results and went
back for more. The saint told her to go to the well and draw
inexhaustibly until cured.

For all others, the remedy is to be found in a meditation of these
words of the "Our Father:" "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive
those who trespass against us." The Almighty will take us at our word.

CHAPTER XIII.
GLUTTONY.

SELF-PRESERVATION is nature's first law, and the first and essential
means of preserving one's existence is the taking of food and drink
sufficient to nourish the body, sustain its strength and repair the
forces thereof weakened by labor, fatigue or illness. God, as well as
nature, obliges us to care for our bodily health, in order that the
spirit within may work out on earth the end of its being.

Being purely animal, this necessity is not the noblest and most
elevating characteristic of our nature. Nor is it, in its imperious and
unrelenting requirements, far removed from a species of tyr