eserve you from outward demonstrations of that which is inwardly
indulged, and you are sure to become in time the object of just contempt
and ridicule. It will soon be well known that the surest way to inflict
pain upon you is to extol the excellences or to dwell on the happiness
of others, and your failings will be considered an amusing subject for
jesting observation to experimentalize upon. I have often watched the
downward progress I have just described; and, unless the grace of God,
working with your own vigorous self-control, should alter your present
frame of mind, I can see no reason why you should escape when others
inevitably fall.

The circumstance in which this vice manifests itself most painfully and
most dangerously is that of a large family. How deplorable is it, when,
instead of making each separate interest the interest of the whole, and
rejoicing in the love and admiration bestowed on each separate
individual, as if it were bestowed on the whole, such love and such
admiration excite, on the contrary, irritation and regret.

Among children, this evil seldom attracts notice; if one girl is praised
for dancing or singing much better than her sister, and the sister
taunted into further efforts by insulting comparisons, the poor mistaken
parent little thinks that, in the pain she inflicts on the depreciated
child, she is implanting a perennial root of danger and sorrow. The
child may cry and sob at the time, and afterward feel uncomfortable in
the presence of one whose superiority has been made the means of
worrying her; and, if envious by nature, she will probably take the
first opportunity of pointing out to the teachers any little error of
her sister's. The permanent injury, however, remains to be effected when
they both grow to woman's estate; the envious sister will then take
every artful opportunity of lessening the influence of the one who is
considered her superior, of insinuating charges against her to those
whose good opinion they both value the most. And she is only too easily
successful; she is successful, that success may bring upon her the
penalty of her sin, for Heaven is then the most incensed against us when
our sin appears to prosper. Various and inexhaustible are the mere
temporal punishments of this sin of envy; of the sin which deprives
another of even one shade of the influence, admiration, and affection,
they would otherwise have enjoyed.

If the preference of a female friend excite