ng alarming shape sometimes to our
secret thoughts about our neighbors.

How many communities, how many households even, are without a tyrant? If
we could "move for returns of suffering," as that tender and thoughtful
man, Arthur Helps, says, we should find a far heavier aggregate of misery
inflicted by unsuspected, unresisted tyrannies than by those which are
patent to everybody, and sure to be overthrown sooner or later.

An exhaustive sermon on this subject should be set off in three divisions,
as follows:--

PRIVATE TYRANTS.

_1st._ Number of--
_2d._ Nature of--
_3d._ Longevity of--

_First_. Their number. They are not enumerated in any census. Not even the
most painstaking statistician has meddled with the topic. Fancy takes bold
leaps at the very suggestion of such an estimate, and begins to think at
once of all things in the universe which are usually mentioned as beyond
numbering. Probably one good way of getting at a certain sort of result
would be to ask each person of one's acquaintance, "Do you happen to know
a private tyrant?"

How well we know beforehand the replies we should get from _some_ beloved
men and women,--that is, if they spoke the truth!

But they would not. That is the saddest thing about these private
tyrannies. They are in many cases borne in such divine and uncomplaining
silence by their victims, perhaps for long years, the world never dreams
that they exist. But at last the fine, subtle writing, which no control,
no patience, no will can thwart, becomes set on the man's or the woman's
face, and tells the whole record. Who does not know such faces? Cheerful
usually, even gay, brave, and ready with lines of smile; but in repose so
marked, so scarred with unutterable weariness and disappointment, that
tears spring in the eyes and love in the hearts of all finely organized
persons who meet them.

_Secondly_. Nature of private tyrants. Here also the statistician has not
entered. The field is vast; the analysis difficult.

Selfishness is, of course, their leading characteristic; in fact, the very
sum and substance of their natures. But selfishness is Protean. It has as
many shapes as there are minutes, and as many excuses and wraps of sheep's
clothing as ever ravening wolf possessed.

One of its commonest pleas is that of weakness. Here it often is so
inextricably mixed with genuine need and legitimate claim that one grows
bewildered between sympathy and resentment. In this s