It is quite amusing to witness the various methods resorted to for cheating the world with regard to these sore places in personal pride. Men who are conscious that they do not possess a particle of musical taste, and are really ignorant of the difference between Dundee and Yankee Doodle, will profess to be "very fond of music," and will not unfrequently convince themselves that they are so. Men who are exceedingly sensitive touching any eccentricities of person, will be constantly joking about their own long noses, or red hair, or big feet, and run on about them in the pleasantest sort of way, and persist in doing it on all occasions, as if the matter were exceedingly amusing to them, when the fact is that their pride is very sore in that particular spot. A woman who has passed her hour of bloom, and feels with sensitive pain the creeping on of ancient maidenhood, will talk charmingly, and with superfluous iteration, about the usefulness of old maids, and the independence of their lot--determined to cover up the galled spot that burns upon the surface of her personal pride. The trick of keeping up the appearances of wealth, after wealth is departed, is a familiar one; and though if rarely deceives, it is likely to be persisted in to the end of time. It is often very pitiful to witness the ingenuity of the efforts that are made to cover from public observation the soreness of personal pride, caused by a change of circumstances. The Hepsibah Pynchons abound in houses of less than seven gables. There is probably no harness so apt to gall the shoulder of personal pride as that of ambition. The number of men in the world whose personal pride has a sore on it, inflicted by disappointed ambition, is sadly large. I have seen many a worthy man utterly spoiled by his failure to reach the political, social, or literary eminence at which he has aimed. Thenceforward, his hand has been against every man, and he has imagined that every man's hand has been against him. All who contributed to his defeat, and all in any way associated with them, have become the subjects of his hatred and his animadversion. He has retired into himself, sneering at every thing and everybody, doubtful of the sincerity of all friendly professions, and regarding himself as "a passenger," while the poor fools among whom he once so gladly numbered himself, chase the baubles by which his life has been so miserably cheated of its meed. It is very hard for a proud man, with a strong will, to feel that he has been baffled and beaten; and a really noble man, defeated in his objects by trickery and meanness, will sometimes become half insane with the wound which his pride has received. He will never forget it; and the old sore can never be touched, even in the most accidental way, without calling the fire into his eye, and the color into his cheek. In the domain of politics, "sore heads" notoriously abound, and I suppose they always will.