at too, there would seem to be but
little hope indeed. Now, almost the only thing needed for a rapid
approach to a more normal mental sense of proportion is a keener
recognition of the want. But this want must be found first in
ourselves, not in others. There is the inclination to regard our own
life as bigger and more important than the life of any one about us;
or the reverse attitude of bewailing its lack of importance, which
is quite the same. In either case our own life is dwelt upon first.
Then there is the immediate family, after that our own especial
friends,--all assuming a gigantic size which puts quite out of the
question an occasional bird's-eye view of the world in general. Even
objects which might be in the middle distance of a less extended
view are quite screened by the exaggerated size of those which seem
to concern us most immediately.

One's own life is important; one's own family and friends are
important, very, when taken in their true proportion. One should
surely be able to look upon one's own brothers and sisters as if
they were the brothers and sisters of another, and to regard the
brothers and sisters of another as one's own. Singularly, too, real
appreciation of and sympathy with one's own grows with this broader
sense of relationship. In no way is this sense shown more clearly
than by a mother who has the breadth and the strength to look upon
her own children as if they belonged to some one else, and upon the
children of others as if they belonged to her. But the triviality of
magnifying one's own out of all proportion has not yet been
recognized by many.

So every trivial happening in our own lives or the lives of those
connected with us is exaggerated, and we keep ourselves and others
in a chronic state of contraction accordingly.

Think of the many trifles which, by being magnified and kept in the
foreground, obstruct the way to all possible sight or appreciation
of things that really hold a more important place. The cook, the
waitress, various other annoyances of housekeeping; a gown that does
not suit, the annoyances of travel, whether we said the right thing
to so-and-so, whether so-and-so likes us or does not like
us,--indeed, there is an immense army of trivial imps, and the
breadth of capacity for entertaining these imps is so large in some
of us as to be truly encouraging; for if the domain were once
deserted by the imps, there remains the breadth, which must have the
same capa