There are sensitive people who, when hard-hit by Fortune, mope like moulting fowls and creep into dark corners of the earth; they do not strut in the market-place and shout loud-throated their woes to the crowd; they lower their flag and surrender themselves to fate. Their vanity supports their poverty, and their poverty breaks their heart. Really, these people are victims of false shame. False shame deludes their common sense. It discolours their imagination, enfeebles their will-power, and drives them on to the rocks to feed with the goats. Their misfortune assumes an exaggerated character in their own minds. They fancy that the world stares coldly on them in their adversity and whispers contemptuously against them behind their backs, and they collapse in the frigid atmosphere with which they surround themselves. Their vanity betrays them into surmising unwholesome things. They fidget about themselves in their supersensitiveness. They adore public opinion, and fancy themselves filling a large place in its consideration, and they dread the smiting lash of its hostile criticism. The truth is humiliating but very refreshing to our morbid disposition, and the truth is that people are not thinking much about us, however conspicuously we imagine ourselves to be painted in the picture. We are only one of a crowd of common people, nor even the most interesting figure in it. It is unwise to esteem ourselves to be of immeasurably more consequence than we really are. The busy world at best gives us only a passing thought. Dr. Johnson bluntly said: "No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. The utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle and be forgotten." If a man thinks no more seriously of his own misfortunes than his neighbour thinks of them, his troubles will be lightly borne. However, the world is much more good-natured than the man of morbid temper gives it credit for. Penetrate through its cold reserve, and you often find within a warm, sympathetic heart. The good English heart is oft-times hedged by a _chevaux de frise_ of English hauteur hard to break through, but get within the lines and you receive a cordial welcome.