est and purest happiness that earth
affords. But then, with cultivation and care, it might be a great deal
happier. Very fair pears have been raised by dropping a seed into a
good soil and letting it alone for years; but finer and choicer are
raised by the watchings, tendings, prunings of the gardener. Wild
grape-vines bore very fine grapes, and an abundance of them, before our
friend Dr. Grant took up his abode at Iona, and, studying the laws of
Nature, conjured up new species of rarer fruit and flavor out of the
old. And so, if all the little foxes that infest our domestic vine and
fig-tree were once hunted out and killed, we might have fairer clusters
and fruit all winter."

"But, papa," said Jennie, "to come to the foxes; let's know what they
are."

"Well, as the text says, _little_ foxes, the pet foxes of good people,
unsuspected little animals,--on the whole, often thought to be really
creditable little beasts, that may do good, and at all events cannot do
much harm. And as I have taken to the Puritanic order in my discourse, I
shall set them in sevens, as Noah did his clean beasts in the ark. Now
my seven little foxes are these:--Fault-finding, Intolerance, Reticence,
Irritability; Exactingness, Discourtesy, Self-Will. And here," turning
to my sermon, "is what I have to say about the first of them."

* * * * *

Fault-finding,--a most respectable little animal, that many people let
run freely among their domestic vines, under the notion that he helps
the growth of the grapes, and is the principal means of keeping them in
order.

Now it may safely be set down as a maxim, that nobody likes to be found
fault with, but everybody likes to find fault when things do not suit
him.

Let my courteous reader ask him- or herself if he or she does not
experience a relief and pleasure in finding fault with or about whatever
troubles them.

This appears at first sight an anomaly in the provisions of Nature.
Generally we are so constituted that what it is a pleasure to us to do
it is a pleasure to our neighbor to have us do. It is a pleasure to
give, and a pleasure to receive. It is a pleasure to love, and a
pleasure to be loved; a pleasure to admire, a pleasure to be admired. It
is a pleasure also to find fault, but _not_ a pleasure to be found fault
with. Furthermore, those people whose sensitiveness of temperament leads
them to find the most fault are precisely those who can least bear t