Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/84

 sane. Oh, the tortures I have suffered in those days in suffering those who shared my home and table to have their way. You must have thought me mad, when you saw me that day, or umbrageous to a degree of madness. But I was all nerves, believe me. And nothing seemed to sooth my aching nerves as breaking something.

"And yet, when I threw a plate at the servant, because she came into the dining room in her sabots—we had a French maid from the Midi who would not for the world forgo her wooden shoes—tuk, tuk, tuk on the wooden floor is maddening in the mountain silences—it was because that French slattern, who did as she pleased in her own little way, did not go the length of her desire and throw her sabots in my face. I think, I am certain, that a sabot on the head from that servant would have cured me of my disease. "For supersensitiveness is nothing but a disease produced by submission in your household and aggravated by fawning or by an excess of affection. Sincerity in