n by that most intolerable of all social manifestations--a
stare.

* * * * *

--I have a friend, who declares that he has LOST A SMILE. Not
one from his sweetheart, for that would be either recoverable or
replaceable with another. The smile he mourns is--his own. To speak
plainly, he has lost, through neuralgia, the control over the risible
muscles of his face, and they not only refuse to obey him in his desire
and design to beam upon all peaceful comers, but occasionally put in
motion another set of facial strings, which give him a depressed and
lachrymose air when he would fain appear most jubilant. He says he never
till now knew how much of his facial aspect was artificial. His present
condition is only relieved when he is under the control of some powerful
emotion. _Then_ he can laugh as heartily and present the appearance of
so doing as fully as ever. It is only the conventional smile, the bland,
self-possessed smile of society, that is utterly gone from him. I
elicited the confession by entering his room noiselessly one day, and
detecting him in the act of making the gloomiest grimaces at a small
boarding-house mirror on the wall. He was much confused, and at first
denied any such employment; but ultimately admitted that he had been
practicing facial gymnastics for the purpose of simulating the smile he
had lost. Perhaps some of our fashionable dentists may be able to aid
him by a suggestion. They certainly have more smiles at their command
than any class of men that have come under my observation. How singular
that the most ferocious quadrupeds and the blandest of men should evince
their most contrasted characteristics--fierceness and amenity--by
showing their teeth.

I sometimes think those are blessed who are endowed with a coarse
organization. Sensitive people are chronic martyrs. Their nerves are so
many toes, that their neighbors and friends are perpetually treading on.
Not only are the pangs of such more acute, but the occasions of injury
are infinitely multiplied by super-susceptibility. Talk of the happy
hours of childhood! Ask nine persons out of ten, who are of susceptible
organization, at what period in life their sufferings were most intense
and unremitting, and if they be gifted with good memories, their reply
will be, 'before adolescence.'[3] For susceptibility of nerve implies
also high mental capability, acute intelligence, vivid imagination, all
of which go to in