There are two ways of showing anger, when one is unfortunate enough to
be under the necessity of being angry. You can't always help it. Some
people are never put out. However much you rile them, they are always
good-humoured, always cool, always friendly. You might as well try to
talk the sun behind a cloud as to get them in a rage. Happy the few who
have this art! They always get the best of it, they always win the
greatest respect, they always are the least likely people for any one to
quarrel with.

I don't count these among the two classes of angry people, because they
are not angry. But angry people are generally either in a rage or in
the sulks. Neither is pleasant to meet, yet for my own part I would
sooner have to do with the fellow in the rage. There's no deception
about him; he's angry, and he lets you know it; he's got a grievance,
and he blurts out what it is; he hits straight out from the shoulder,
and you know what you've to expect. With such a one it is generally
soon all over. Just as the April shower, sharp enough while it lasts,
gives place in time to the sun, so Will Hothead generally gets all right
as soon as he has let the steam off; and when he shakes hands and makes
it up, you are pretty sure he thinks none the worse of you, and bears no
malice.

Don't imagine I'm trying to justify exhibitions of temper. Far from it.
I say every boy who can't control his temper has yet to learn one of
the greatest lessons of life. What I want to show is that even passion,
bad as it is, is not so bad as sulkiness.

For just consider what a miserable sort of boy this Tom Sulks, that we
all of us know, is. Why, almost before he could speak he had learned to
pout. If a toy was denied him, he neither bellowed like his little
brother nor raved like his little sister, but toddled off and sulked in
a corner all day long. When he grew a little older, if he was not
allowed to play in the garden because it was damp, he refused to play in
the nursery, he refused to come down to the dining-room, he refused to
say his prayers at bedtime. When he was old enough to go to school, he
would either play marbles the way he was used to (which was the wrong
way), or not at all. If found fault with for not knowing his lesson, he
pushed his books from him, and endured to be stood in the corner, or
punished some other way, rather than learn his task. The vice only
became worse and worse as time went on, and to-day Tom