himself and them, that was the true cause of those two or three furious
lashes you saw him deal upon the unhappy screw's ribs. Whenever I read
any article in a review, which is manifestly malignant, and intended not
to improve an author, but to give him pain, I cannot help immediately
wondering what may have been the matter with the man who wrote the
malignant article. Something must have been making him very unhappy,
I think. I do not allude to playful attacks upon a man, made in pure
thoughtlessness and buoyancy of spirit,--but to attacks which indicate a
settled, deliberate, calculating rancor. Never be angry with the man who
makes such an attack; you ought to be sorry for him. It is out of great
misery that malignity for the most part proceeds. To give the ordinary
mortal a fair chance, let him be reasonably successful and happy. Do not
worry a man into nervous irritability, and he will be amiable. Do not
dip a man in water, and he will not be wet.

Of course, my friend, I know who is to you the most interesting of all
beings, and whose history is the most interesting of all histories.
_You_ are to yourself the centre of this world, and of all the interests
of this world. And this is quite right.

There is no selfishness about all this, except that selfishness which
forms an essential element in personality,--that selfishness which must
go with the fact of one's having a self. You cannot help looking at all
things as they appear from your own point of view; and things press
themselves upon your attention and your feeling as they affect yourself.
And apart from anything like egotism, or like vain self-conceit, it is
probable that you may know that a great deal depends upon your exertion
and your life. There are those at home who would fare but poorly, if you
were just now to die. There are those who must rise with you, if you
rise, and sink with you, if you sink. Does it sometimes suddenly strike
you, what a little object you are, to have so much depending on you?
Vaguely, in your thinking and feeling, you add your circumstances
and your lot to your personality; and these make up an object of
considerable extension. You do so with other people as well as with
yourself. You have all their belongings as a background to the picture
of them which you have in your mind; and they look very little when
you see them in fact, because you see them without these belongings.
I remember, when a boy, how disappointed I was at firs