“12. Do all you can to make others happy. Be cheerful. Bend your neck and back more frequently when you pass those outside of ‘select circles.’ Fulfil your promises. Pay your debts. Be yourself all you see in others. Be a good man, a true Christian, and then you cannot help finally to

“13. Stop grumbling.”

The above is an admirable receipt for the grumbling disease. It is composed of ingredients each of which is the best quality of healing medicine. Every grumbler should take the whole as prescribed, and he will soon experience a sensible change in his nature for the better; his friends also will observe him rapidly convalescent, and after a short time will rejoice over his restoration to a sound healthy condition, called by moral physicians—“CONTENTMENT.”

“Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content—
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent—
The poor estate scorns fortune’s angry frown.
Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss,
Beggars enjoy when princes oft do miss.
The homely house that harbours quiet rest,
The cottage that affords no pride nor care,
The mean that ’grees with country music best,
That sweet consort of Mirth’s and Music’s fare.
Obscuréd life sits down a type of bliss;
A mind content both crown and kingdom is.”

XIX.

THE EGOTIST.

“What cracker is this same, that deafs our ears
With this abundance of superfluous breath?”
Shakespeare.
“For none more likes to hear himself converse.”
Byron.

This is a talker whose chief aim is the exhibition of himself in terms and phrases too fulsome and frequent for the pleasure of his hearers. I was, I am, I shall be, I have, etc., are the pronouns and verbs which he chiefly employs. He is all I. I is the representative letter of his name, his person, his speech, and his actions. There is nothing greater in the universe to him than that of which I is the type. There is not a more essential letter in the English alphabet to him than the letter I. Destroy this, and he would be disabled in his conversation; he would lose the only emblem which he has to set himself off before the eyes of people. He is nothing and can do nothing without I. This stands out in an embossed form, which may be felt by the blind man, as well as be seen by those who have eyesight. If you tell him of an interesting circumstance in which a friend of yours was placed, “I” is sure to be the beginning of a similar story concerning himself. Speak of some success which your friend has made in trade or commerce, and “I” will be the commencement of something similar, in which he has been more successful. You can inform him of nothing, but “I” is associated with what is equal or far superior. Were one required to give an etymology of the egotist, it would be in the words of the Rev. J. B. Owen: “One of those gluttonous parts of speech that gulp down every substantive in social grammar into its personal pronoun, condensing all the tenses and moods of other people’s verbs into a first person singular of its own.”