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ANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, in one of those tales of marvel, by which he has wrought an attractive setting of fiction around a gem of truth, describes a magical mirror of diabolical invention, which distorted and rendered hideous the fairest objects it reflected. When the mirror was fractured, certain individuals gathered up the fragments and made spectacles of them, and henceforth viewed all creation through a perverted medium.

These are the malcontents of the present day. An unbroken frown keeps the gloomy glasses fixed across their brows. And the fault-finding instinct is quickened to such a degree in the wearers that they daily endure a self-imposed martyrdom. Let them walk through the smoothest, greenest, choicest paths of life, the thorns of discontent are always piercing their feet, and all the burs in the lanes are sure to cling to their garments. Let the sun shine ever so brightly, no light is received into their rayless eyes, and yet they discover and magnify all the motes in its beams. They move about with lugu-