one
thing, because I think that we are most of us apt to be rather deficient
in it, and that is in the trying to suit ourselves to the tastes and
views of persons whose professions or inclinations, or situation in
life, differ widely from our own.... As a general rule, no man can fall
into conversation with another without being able to learn something
valuable from him. But in order to get at this benefit there must be
something of an accommodating spirit on both sides; each must be ready
to hear candidly and to answer fairly; each must try to please the
other. We all suffer from the want of acquaintance with the habits and
opinions and feelings of different classes of society.

--_Dr. Arnold._

* * * * *

If you would be loved as a companion, avoid unnecessary criticism upon
those with whom you live. The number of people who have taken out
judges' patents for themselves is very large in any society. Now it
would be hard for a man to live with another who was always criticising
his actions, even if it were kindly and just criticism. It would be like
living between the glasses of a microscope. But these self-elected
judges, like their prototypes, are very apt to have the persons they
judge brought before them in the guise of culprits.

Let not familiarity swallow up old courtesy. Many of us have a habit of
saying to those with whom we live such things as we say about strangers
behind their backs. There is no place, however, where real politeness is
of more value than where we mostly think it would be superfluous. You
may say more truth, or rather speak out more plainly to your associates,
but not less courteously than to strangers.

--_Helps._

* * * * *

Much of the sorrow of life springs from the accumulation, day by day and
year by year, of little trials--a letter written in less than courteous
terms, a wrangle at the breakfast table over some arrangement of the
day, the rudeness of an acquaintance on the way to the city, an
unfriendly act on the part of another firm, a cruel criticism
needlessly reported by some meddler, a feline amenity at afternoon tea,
the disobedience of one of your children, a social slight by one of your
circle, a controversy too hotly conducted. The trials within this class
are innumerable, and consider, not one of them is inevitable, not one of
them but might have been spared if we or our brother man had had a grain
of k