, practically, unalterable, and must simply be
accepted and borne with as best one may. There is the person, for
instance, who is always and invariably behind time in every movement of
his life. He leaves undone the things that ought to be done, until there
is little use in doing them at all. He exhausts the patience and excites
the irritability of his friend, who is, by nature, prompt and always up
with the hour. There is the person who, from some latent cause in his
character, always manages badly; who reduces all his own affairs to
confusion; who contrives to waste more money, time, and energy than
industry and energy can produce; whose normal condition is a crisis of
disaster, and who, if extricated from this seventy times seven, will
contrive to fall into it again. All these, and a thousand variations on
characters of this type, we see around us, or within ourselves,
constantly, and a liberal proportion of the trial or discord incident to
family life, or to friendship and companionship, is simply in constantly
demanding of another that which he cannot give, which he does not
possess. To ask of the habitual procrastinator that he shall be prompt;
or of the defective manager that he shall keep his affairs in order and
make the most and the best out of his possessions, is totally useless.
In the evolutionary progress of life, he will probably, sometime and
somewhere, learn wisdom and do better; but habit and temperament are not
liable to meet a sea change into something new and strange all in the
flash of a moment, and it is worse than useless to demand this, or to be
irritated, or impatient, or even too sorrowful, because of this fact.
There are things that cannot be cured,--at least, not immediately.
Therefore they must be endured. When one once makes up his mind to the
acceptance of this theory it is astonishing to see how it simplifies the
problem. The philosophy is merely to do one's own part, but not to make
any superhuman effort to do the other person's part also. Let it go.
There is no use in making a _casus belli_ of the matter. Nothing is ever
helped by irritation over it,--even the irritation of generosity and
love, which seeks only the good of the other.

There is, for instance, the procrastinating correspondent. You write,
and you want a reply, and you want it straightway. On your own part you
would make it with the promptness and despatch of the United States mail
itself, but your correspondent is not con