Page:The Adventures of David Simple (1904).djvu/130

 company they had just left. David said, he thought there was no great harm in this sort of vanity; for if a man could make himself happy by imagining himself six foot tall, though he was but three, it certainly would be ill-natured in any one to take that happiness from him. Spatter smiled, and said, he believed he at present spoke without consideration; for nothing hurts a man or his acquaintance more than his possessing himself with the thoughts he is any thing he is not. If, indeed, a short man would think himself tall, without being actuated by that fancy, there would be no great matter in it; but if that whim carries him to be continually endeavouring at things out of his reach, it probably will make him pull them down on his own head, and those of all his companions; and if the looking as if you did not believe he is quite so tall, as he is resolved you shall think him, will turn him from being your friend into your most inveterate enemy, then it becomes hurtful: "And," continued he, "I never yet knew a man who did not hate the person who seemed not to have the same opinion of him as he had of himself; and, as that very seldom happens, I believe it is one of the chief causes of the malignity mankind have against one another. If a man who is mad, and has taken it into his head he is a king, will content himself with mock diadems, and the tawdry robes of honour he can come at, in some it will excite laughter and in others pity, according to the different sorts of men; but if he is afraid that others don't pay him the respect due to the station his own wild brain has placed him in, and for that reason carries daggers and poison under his fancied royal robes, to murder everybody he meets, he will become the pest of society; and, in their own defence, men are obliged to confine him. The three fellows we were with to-night, have an aversion to everybody who do not seem to think them as wise as they think themselves;