g of his
unwelcome personality into general conversation, his weak vanity,
which demands our admiration for the toil and hardships he has
undergone, which, if they had served the purpose they should have
done, would have made him too strong a man, and too much of a man, to
force either pity or admiration from people when it was not freely
offered.

The favorite gibe of the self-made man is directed against the college
graduate. Let there be a young fellow present who is fresh from
college, and let him mention any subject connected with college life,
from honors to athletics, and then, if you are hostess, sit still and
let the icy waves of misery creep over your sensitive soul, for this
is the opportunity of his life to the self-made man. Hear him tear
colleges limb from limb, and cite all the failures of which he ever
has known to be those of college men. Hear him tell of the futile
efforts of college boys to get into business. Hear him drag in all the
evidences of shattered constitutions, ruined by study, and then hold
your breath; for all this is but preliminary to the telling of the
story of a colossal success--the history of the self-made man. You
might as well lean back and let him have his say, for he has only been
waiting all this time for an opening in the conversation to insert the
wedge of his Ego.

It seems to be the prerogative of some self-made men not only to boast
of themselves, their wives, their sons, their daughters, their houses,
their horses--everything!--but to decry all methods of achievement not
their own, and all successes not won by their methods. These are the
self-made men who bring into disrepute all the grandeur and glorious
achievement of their kind. Why must they spoil it? I implore them to
assume a virtue if they have it not. I beg them, with all their
getting, to get understanding. And if they will not open their eyes
and see the anguish they are causing, if they cannot detect the fixed
smile of polite endurance on the tired faces of their patient women
friends, there will come a day, and we can already see its faint
glimmering in the East, when we shall not care whether they are
self-made, and we could even live through it if they were not made at
all.

THE DYSPEPTIC

The dyspeptic generally wants to tell you all about it. That is a bore
to begin with; for nobody in the world wants to hear anybody in the
world tell all about anything in the world. Oh, those wearisome,
breathles