That the exactions never or rarely take shape in words is, to the unbiassed looker-on, only an exasperating feature in their tyranny. While it saves the conscience of the tyrant,--if such tyrants have any,--it makes doubly sure the success of their tyranny. And probably nothing short of revelation from Heaven, in shape of blinding light, would ever open their eyes to the fact that it is even more selfish to hold a generous spirit fettered hour by hour by a constant fear of giving pain than to coerce or threaten or scold them into the desired behavior. Invalids, all invalids, stand in deadly peril of becoming tyrants of this order. A chronic invalid who entirely escapes it must be so nearly saint or angel that one instinctively feels as if their invalidism would soon end in the health of heaven. We know of one invalid woman, chained to her bed for long years by an incurable disease, who has had the insight and strength to rise triumphant above this danger. Her constant wish and entreaty is that her husband should go freely into all the work and the pleasure of life. Whenever he leaves her, her farewell is not, "How soon do you think you shall come back? At what hour, or day, may I look for you?" but, "Now, pray stay just as long as you enjoy it. If you hurry home one hour sooner for the thought of me, I shall be wretched." It really seems almost as if the longer he stayed away,--hours, days, weeks even,--the happier she were. By this sweet and wise unselfishness she has succeeded in realizing the whole blessedness of wifehood far more than most women who have health. But we doubt if any century sees more than one such woman as she is. Another large class, next to that of invalids the most difficult to deal with, is made up of people who are by nature or by habit uncomfortably sensitive or irritable. Who has not lived at one time or other in his life in daily contact with people of this sort,--persons whose outbreaks of temper, or of wounded feeling still worse than temper, were as incalculable as meteoric showers? The suppressed atmosphere, the chronic state of alarm and misgiving, in which the victims of this species of tyranny live are withering and exhausting to the stoutest hearts. They are also hardening; perpetually having to wonder and watch how people will "take" things is apt sooner or later to result in indifference as to whether they take them well or ill. But to define all the shapes of private tyranny would require whole histories; it is safe, however, to say that so far as any human being attempts to set up his own individual need or preference as law to determine the action of any other human being, in small matters or great, so far forth he is a tyrant. The limit of his tyranny may be narrowed by lack of power on his part, or of response on the part of his fellows; but its essence is as purely tyrannous as if he sat on a throne with an executioner within call.