wn consequence as of thinking meanly of
other people. It is easy to restore one's own confidence by dwelling
with bitter emphasis on the faults and failings of those about one, by
cataloguing the deficiencies of those who have achieved success, by
accustoming oneself to think of one's own lack of success as a sign of
unworldliness, and by attributing the success of others to a cynical
and unscrupulous pursuit of reputation. There is nothing in the world
which so differentiates men and women as the tendency to suspect and
perceive affronts, and to nurture grievances. It is so fatally easy to
think that one has been inconsiderately treated, and to mistake
susceptibility for courage. Let us boldly face the fact that we get in
this world very much what we earn and deserve, and there is no surer
way of being excluded and left out from whatever is going forward than
a habit of claiming more respect and deference than is due to one. If
we are snubbed and humiliated, it is generally because we have put
ourselves forward and taken more than our share. Whereas if we have
been content to bear a hand, to take trouble, and to desire useful work
rather than credit, our influence grows silently and we become
indispensable. A man who does not notice petty grumbling, who laughs
away sharp comments, who does not brood over imagined insults, who
forgets irritable passages, who makes allowance for impatience and
fatigue, is singularly invulnerable. The power of forgetting is
infinitely more valuable than the power of forgiving, in many
conjunctions of life. In nine cases out of ten, the wounds which our
sensibilities receive are the merest pin-pricks, enlarged and fretted
by our own hands; we work the little thorn about in the puncture till
it festers, instead of drawing it out and casting it away.

Very few of the prizes of life that we covet are worth winning, if we
scheme to get them; it is the honour or the task that comes to us
unexpectedly that we deserve. I have heard discontented men say that
they never get the particular work that they desire and for which they
feel themselves to be suited; and meanwhile life flies swiftly, while
we are picturing ourselves in all sorts of coveted situations, and
slighting the peaceful happiness, the beautiful joys which lie all
around us, as we go forward in our greedy reverie.

I have been much surprised, since I began some years ago to receive
letters from all sorts of unknown people, to realis