ys kept them in order. I do not mean that
we taught them to behave wonderfully well, but I mean that we made
them give way to us elder ones. Among themselves they squabbled
dreadfully.

We are a very ill-tempered family.

CHAPTER II.

ILL-TEMPERED PEOPLE AND THEIR FRIENDS--NARROW ESCAPES--THE
HATCHET-QUARREL.

I do not wish for a moment to defend ill-temper, but I do think that
people who suffer from ill-tempered people often talk as if they were
the only ones who do suffer in the matter; and as if the ill-tempered
people themselves quite enjoyed being in a rage.

And yet how much misery is endured by those who have never got the
victory over their own ill-temper! To feel wretched and exasperated by
little annoyances which good-humoured people get over with a shrug or
a smile; to have things rankle in my mind like a splinter in the
flesh, which glide lightly off yours, and leave no mark; to be unable
to bear a joke, knowing that one is doubly laughed at because one
can't; to have this deadly sore at heart--"I _cannot_ forgive; I
_cannot_ forget," there is no pleasure in these things. The tears of
sorrow are not more bitter than the tears of anger, of hurt pride or
thwarted will. As to the fit of passion in which one is giddy, blind,
and deaf, if there is a relief to the overcharged mind in saying the
sharpest things and hitting the heaviest blows one can at the moment,
the pleasantness is less than momentary, for almost as we strike we
foresee the pains of regret and of humbling ourselves to beg pardon
which must ensue. Our friends do not always pity as well as blame us,
though they are sorry for those who were possessed by devils long ago.

Good-tempered people, too, who I fancy would find it quite easy not to
be provoking, and to be a little patient and forbearing, really seem
sometimes to irritate hot-tempered ones on purpose, as if they thought
it was good for them to get used to it.

I do not mean that I think ill-tempered people should be constantly
yielded to, as Nurse says Mrs. Rampant and the servants have given way
to Mr. Rampant till he has got to be quite as unreasonable and nearly
as dangerous as most maniacs, and his friends never cross him, for the
same reason that they would hot stir up a mad bull.

Perhaps I do not quite know how I would have our friends treat us who
are cursed with bad tempers. I think to avoid unnecessary provocation,
and to be patient with us in the height of our pa