Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/256

Rh and who, though not insensible to the darker side of human nature, draws over it the veil of charity, because she considers all her fellow-creatures as heirs to the same sufferings and infirmities which she endures, yet as children of the same heavenly Father, and subject with herself to the same dispensation of mercy and forgiveness.

The habit of thinking perpetually of self is always accompanied by its just and necessary punishment—a more than ordinary share of wounded feeling. The reason is a very obvious one; that persons whose thoughts are usually thus engaged, are apt to suppose themselves the subject of general observation, and scarcely can a whisper be heard in the same room, but they immediately settle it in their own minds that they are the subject of injurious remark. They are also keenly alive to every slight; such as not being known or noticed when they are met, not being invited to visit their friends, and a thousand other acts of omission, which an unselfish disposition would kindly attribute to some other cause than intentional disrespect.

It is the result of selfishness, too, when we are so unreasonable as to expect that everybody should love us; or when we are piqued and irritated when convinced that some, upon whom we have but little claim, do not. Surely, so unfair a demand upon the good- will of society might be cured by asking, Do we love everybody, do justice to everybody, and deserve to be loved by everybody? For, until this is the case, what title have we to universal affection? It might also tend, in some degree, to equalize the balance of requirement in favour of self, if we would recollect that the faults we most dislike in others, may, all the while be less offensive to us, than ours are to them; and that not only for all the actual faults, but even for the objectionable peculiarities, which society puts up with in us, we owe a