Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/266

 Unselfishness is a virtue which is seldom questioned, but, if carried to excess, it places its owner at a manifest disadvantage. It is a hindrance to personal success, and whoever may have first made the statement, the world surely did not wait for his utterance before discovering that "nothing succeeds like success."

James Spencer, himself a successful man, unacquainted with the first principles of self-abnegation, did not concern himself much with his daughter's character. She was useful to him in many ways, but her personality failed to interest him. He would not have acknowledged even to himself that he found her amiability monotonous. Indeed, Mary Anne's "crying virtue" as her father once called it in a moment of irritation, had never awakened a distinct misgiving in any one's mind, excepting in that of her father's grandmother, Old Lady Pratt.

"Don't talk to me about Mary Anne's unselfishness!" the independent old lady would exclaim. "I've no patience with her."

"But, Grandma!" would be the rejoinder, "don't you think her spirit of self-sacrifice is very beautiful?"

"A fig for her sperrit of self-sacrifice! Before you know it, it'll be all the sperrit she's got left! I can tell you something that's a long sight better than self-sacrifice, and that's a good, wholesome bit of self-assertion! We wa'n't made to lie down for other folks to walk over. What's the