Page:The Sunday Eight O'Clock (1916).pdf/201



OST men could have a leg cut off or receive a refusal of marriage from the girl they love with fortitude and resignation; it is the trifling irritations of life that try our courage and wreck our nervous systems. We can meet death without winking an eye lash, but cold pancakes for breakfast or a lost collar button unfits us for business for the day. Our friends and our reputations are often made or lost by the way in which we meet the seemingly insignificant situations of life.

I knew a man once who lived with his wife twenty years. They stood by each other through all sorts of sorrows and disasters, but he finally applied for a divorce. She had a persistent habit of taking his soiled handkerchief out of his pocket each evening and substituting a fresh one. It