The fact is that care and labor are as much correlated to human
existence as shadow is to light; there is no such thing as excluding
them from any mortal lot. You may make a canary-bird or a gold-fish
live in absolute contentment without a care or labor, but a human
being you cannot. Human beings are restless and active in their
very nature, and will do something, and that something will prove a
care, a labor, and a fatigue, arrange it how you will. As long as
there is anything to be desired and not yet attained, so long its
attainment will be attempted; so long as that attainment is doubtful
or difficult, so long will there be care and anxiety.
THE MAYFLOWER.
[Sidenote: “Cuteness.”]
He possessed a great share of that characteristic national trait so
happily denominated “cuteness,” which signifies an ability to do
everything without trying, to know everything without learning, and
to make more use of one’s _ignorance_ than other people do of their
knowledge.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Making people like us.]
It sometimes goes a great way towards making people like us to take
it for granted that they do already.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A common mode of reasoning.]
She therefore repeated over exactly what she said before, only in
a much louder tone of voice, and with much more vehement forms of
asseveration,—a mode of reasoning which, if not entirely logical,
has at least the sanction of very respectable authorities among the
enlightened and learned.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Danger in apparent safety.]
There is no point in the history of reform, either in communities or
individuals, so dangerous as that where danger seems entirely past.
As long as a man thinks his health failing, he watches, he diets,
and will undergo the most heroic self-denial; but let him once set
himself down as cured, and how readily does he fall back to one soft,
indulgent habit after another, all tending to ruin everything that he
has before done!
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Self-deception.]
How strange that a man may appear doomed, given up, and lost, to the
eye of every looker-on, before he begins to suspect himself!
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Convenient duties.]
What would people do if the convenient shelter of duty did not afford
them a retreat in cases where they are disposed to change their minds?
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Too much heart.]
A man can sometimes become an old bachelor because he has _too much_
heart, as well as too little.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Privileged truth-tellers.]
These privileged truth-tellers are quite a necessary of life to young
ladies in the full tide of society, and we really think it would be
worth while for every dozen of them to unite to keep a person of this
kind on a salary for the benefit of the whole.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Flowers and fruit from the writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe — John Shaqi
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