It seems to me a very melancholy thing for a man to carry a mental ulcer with him through life--to feel its prick and pang in every effort--to be conscious of its presence every hour--to be engaged in covering it from sight, or in the attempt to deceive the world with regard to it. Life is altogether too good a thing to be spoiled by a little sore, or a large one, when there exists an obvious mode of cure. It is our immense and intense self-consciousness that stands in our way always in this matter. The truth is that the world does not think half so much about us as we imagine it does. A man may walk through the city of New York with a face "as homely as a hedge-fence," thinking about it all the time, and wondering what people think of it, and not a man of all the throng will even see it. It is so in the world at large. Our personal peculiarities, our personal failures, our personal weaknesses, our personal affairs generally possess very little interest for others. They have enough to do in taking care of themselves, and have weaknesses, and failures, and peculiarities enough of their own; and if the world should spurn our well-meant efforts in its behalf, why, let it go. It mends nothing to get sore and sensitive over it. When a man truly learns how little important he is in the world, he is generally beyond the danger of becoming galled by his harness, whatever it may be. LESSON XIX. THE INFLUENCE OF PRAISE. "Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances as I delivered them unto you."--ST. PAUL. "O popular applause! What heart of man Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?" COWPER. "_Arbaces_. Why now, you flatter. "_Mardonius_. I never understood the word." A KING AND NO KING. "Praising what is lost Makes the remembrance dear." SHAKSPEARE.