Page:Essays in miniature.djvu/185

 Rh for well-bred little girls? And why should they have been deprived of their only garment to gratify a restless taste for change?

Well, it is useless to complain, for around us on every side people are fretting, and have fretted for generations over the unloved monotony of their surroundings. "It is not given to the world to be contented," says Goethe; and while life can never hurry on fast enough, or assume phases new enough to please the majority of mankind, a few dissatisfied souls will always cling perversely to the things which they have known, and feel more keenly every year that all the vaunted delights of novelty and progress are but a poor substitute for the finer charm of the familiar.