From long observation it has become evident that the misery-habit feeds on sympathy. Children, who are the best examples of honest expression that we have, whereby to see ourselves in an unartificial light, will not continue a mad or a surly crying spell if they are sure it is not producing a sympathetic effect. If they think they are not heard they will at once cease crying. In the same way, grown persons who practice the misery-habit in public take a rest when they are unobserved. They try to hide it, but they are frequently caught in the act of unbuttoning their pouts, and thereby allowing their faces a rest, as soon as they have thought themselves out of sight. We must believe, if this observation be correct, that the object of pessimism, or, the misery-habit, is generally to secure, by dishonest means, selfish attentions that are not earned, and for which no value is given. There are cases no doubt where the misery-habit has been acquired by contact with respected ones who have been the cause of perverse suggestions too strong to be resisted, and for such there can only be pity, and in the cure of whom gentle and loving suggestion should be used, but to the perverse and the chronic practicers of the misery-habit, no toleration is good, for it is on that, and unmerited sympathy, that they live and thrive. On such, all of the misery possible to be scraped up from the discords of life should be dumped, and they should be condemned to herd together, and if it were possible, they should be isolated, as lepers are isolated, from healthy society. Sometimes the victim of the misery-habit practices the habit only within the family. This is especially severe on the family, and is much more difficult to treat. The family is at once the seat of the greatest liberty, and the home and breeding-ground of the greatest tyranny. The family is supposed to be under the holy protection of the divine principle of love, but if that principle is not a possession of the family, there is no protection whatever from most inhuman practices, but instead a license to the cultivation of most discordant passions. It is in the family that mollygrubs are grown and tolerated. It is in the family that one cannot get rid of them by running away, for the family, like the poor, you have with you always. And who would have it otherwise? The whole tendency of civilization is to appreciate the family more and more, and to cultivate respect for the family model as the basis of good government. But it is the very security of the natural, and therefore indissoluble, bonds that gives the selfishly inclined opportunity to practice the misery-habit without fear of being thrown out, left behind, cremated or otherwise gotten rid of, as dead and disagreeable matter is usually treated, in civilized communities.