Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/156

Rh an ill-tempered young woman carries about with her an atmosphere of repulsion wherever she goes. The moment she enters a room, where a social circle are enjoying themselves, conversation either ceases or drags on heavily, as if a stranger or an enemy were near; and kindly thoughts, which the moment before would have found frank and free expression, are suppressed, from the instinctive feeling that she can take no part in them. Each one of the company, in short, feels the worse for her presence, a sense of contraction seizes every heart, a cloud falls upon every countenance; and so powerful are the sympathies of our nature, and so rapidly does that which is evil extend its contaminating influence, that all this will sometimes be experienced, when not a word has been spoken by the victim of ill-temper.

It is easy to perceive when most young women are out of temper, even without the interchange of words. The pouting lip, the door shut with violence, the thread suddenly snapped, the work twitched aside or thrown down, are indications of the real state of the mind, at least as unwise, as they are unlovely. Others who are not guilty of these absurdities, will render themselves still more annoying, by a captiousness of conduct, most difficult to bear with any moderate degree of patience ; by conversing only upon humiliating or unpleasant subjects, complaining incessantly about grievances which all have equally to bear, prolonging disputes about the merest trifles beyond all bounds of reason and propriety; and by finally concluding with a direct reproach for some offence which had far better have been spoken of candidly at first.

But there would be no end to the task of tracing out the symptoms of this malady. Suffice it that a naturally bad temper, or even a moderate one badly disciplined, is the greatest enemy to the happiness of a family which can be