FIDGETY PEOPLE.
There are people whom one occasionally meets with in the world, who are in a state of perpetual fidget and pucker. Every thing goes wrong with them. They are always in trouble. Now, it is the weather, which is too hot; or at another time, too cold. The dust blows into their eyes, or there is "that horrid rain," or "that broiling sun," or "that Scotch mist." They are as ill to please about the weather as a farmer; it is never to their liking, and never will be. They "never saw such a summer," "not a day's fine weather," and they go back to antiquity for comfort—"it was not so in our younger days."
Fidgety people are rarely well. They have generally "a headache," or "spasms," or "nerves," or something of that sort; they can not be comfortable in their way, without trouble. Most of their friends are ill; this one has the gout "so bad;" another has the rheumatics; a third is threatened with consumption; and there is scarcely a family of their acquaintance whose children have not got measles, whooping-cough, scarlet fever, or some other of the thousand ills which infantine flesh is heir to. They are curiously solicitous about the health of every body; this one is exhorted "not to drink too much cold water," another "not to sit in the draught," a third is advised to "wear flannels;" and they have great doctors at their fingers' ends whom they can quote in their support. They have read Buchan and Culpepper, and fed their fidgets upon their descriptions of diseases of all sorts. They offer to furnish recipes for pills, draughts, and liniments; and if you would believe them, your life depends on taking their advice gratis forthwith.
To sit at meals with such people is enough to give one the dyspepsia. The chimney has been smoking, and the soot has got into the soup; the fish is over-done, and the mutton is underdone; the potatoes have had the disease, the sauce is not of the right sort, the jelly is candied, the pastry is fusty, the grapes are sour. Every thing is wrong. The cook must be disposed of; Betty stands talking too long at the back-gate. The poultry-woman must be changed, the potato-man discarded. There will be a clean sweep. But things are never otherwise. The fidgety person remains unchanged, and goes fidgeting along to the end of the chapter; changing servants, and spoiling them by unnecessary complainings and contradictions, until they become quite reckless of ever giving satisfaction.
The fidgety person has been reading the newspaper, and is in a ferment about "that murder!" Every body is treated to its details. Or somebody's house has been broken into, and a constant fidget is kept up for a time about "thieves!" If a cat's whisper is heard in the night, "there is a thief in the house;" if an umbrella is missing, "a thief has been in the lobby;" if a towel can not be found, "a thief must have stolen it off the hedge." You are counseled to be careful of your pockets when you stir abroad. The outer doors are furnished with latches, new bolts and bars are provided for outhouses, bells are hung behind the shutters, and all other possible expedients are devised to keep out the imaginary "thief."
"Oh! there is a smell of fire!" Forthwith the house is traversed, down-stairs and up-stairs, and a voice at length comes from the kitchen, "It's only Bobby been burning a stick." You are told forthwith of a thousand accidents, deaths, and burnings, that have come from burning sticks! Bobby is petrified and horror-stricken, and is haunted by the terror of conflagrations. If Bobby gets a penny from a visitor, he is counseled "not to buy gunpowder" with it, though he has a secret longing for crackers. Maids are cautioned to "be careful about the clothes-horse," and their ears are often startled with a cry from above-stairs of "Betty, there is surely something singeing!"
The fidgety person "can not bear" the wind whistling through the key-hole, nor the smell of washing, nor the sweep's cry of "svee-eep, svee-eep," nor the beating of carpets, nor thick ink, nor a mewing cat, nor new boots, nor a cold in the head, nor callers for rates and subscriptions. All these little things are magnified into miseries, and if you like to listen, you may sit for hours and hear the fidgety person wax eloquent about them, drawing a melancholy pleasure from the recital.
The fidgety person sits upon thorns, and loves to perch his or her auditor on the same raw material. Not only so, but you are dragged over thorns, until you feel thoroughly unskinned. Your ears are bored, and your teeth are set on edge. Your head aches, and your withers are wrung. You are made to shake hands with misery, and almost long for some real sorrow as a relief.
The fidgety person makes a point of getting out of humor upon any occasion, whether about private or public affairs. If subjects for misery do not offer within doors, they abound without. Something that has been done in the next street excites their ire, or something done a thousand miles off, or even something that was done a thousand years ago. Time and place matter nothing to the fidgety. They overleap all obstacles in getting at their subject. They must be in hot water. If one question is set at rest, they start another; and they wear themselves to the bone in settling the affairs of every body, which are never settled; they
"Are made desperate by a too quick sense
Of constant infelicity."
Their feverish existence refuses rest, and they fret themselves to death about matters with which they have often no earthly concern. They are spendthrifts in sympathy, which in them has degenerated into an exquisite tendency to pain. They are launched on a sea of trouble, the shores of which are perpetually extending. They are self-stretched on a rack, the wheels of which are ever going round.
The fundamental maxim of the fidgety is—whatever is, is wrong. They will not allow themselves to be happy, nor any body else. They always assume themselves to be the most aggrieved persons extant. Their grumbling is incessant, and they operate as a social poison wherever they go. Their vanity and self-conceit are usually accompanied by selfishness in a very aggravated form, which only seems to make their fidgets the more intolerable. You will generally observe that they are idle persons; indeed, as a general rule, it may be said, that the fidgety class want healthy occupations. In nine cases out of ten, employment in some active pursuit, in which they could not have time to think about themselves, would operate as a cure.
But, we must make an allowance. Fidgets are often caused by the state of the stomach, and a fit of bad temper may not unfrequently be traced to an attack of indigestion. One of the most fidgety members of the House of Commons is a martyr to dyspepsia, and it is understood that some of his most petulant and bitter diatribes have been uttered while laboring under more than usually severe attacks of this disease. He has "pitched into" some "honorable gentleman" when he should have taken blue pill. And so it is with many a man, in domestic and social life, whom we blame for his snappish and disagreeable temper, but whose stomach is the real organ at fault. Indeed, the stomach is the moral no less than the physical barometer of most men; and we can very often judge of tempers, conditions, and sympathies, pretty accurately, according to its state. Let us, therefore, be charitable to the fidgety, whose stomachs, rather than their hearts, may be at fault; and let us counsel them to mend them, by healthy and temperate modes of living, and by plenty of wholesome occupation and exercise.