The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
Science
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 58, August, 1862: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Suspicious people are disagreeable; also people who are always taking
the pet. Indeed, suspiciousness and pettedness generally go
together. There are many men and women who are always imagining that
some insult is designed by the most innocent words and doings of those
around them, and always suspecting that some evil intention against
their peace is cherished by some one or other. It is most irritating
to have anything to do with such impracticable and silly mortals. But
it is a delightful thing to work along with a man who never takes
offence,--a frank, manly man, who gives credit to others for the same
generosity of nature which he feels within himself, and who, if he
thinks he has reason to complain, speaks out his mind and has things
cleared up at once. A disagreeable person is he who frequently sends
letters to you without paying the postage,--leaving you to pay
twopence for each penny which he has thus saved. The loss of twopence
is no great matter; but there is something irritating in the feeling
that your correspondent has deliberately resolved that he would save
his penny at the cost of your twopence. There is a man, describing
himself as a clergyman of the Church of England, (I cannot think he is
one,) who occasionally sends me an abusive anonymous letter, and who
invariably sends his letters unpaid. I do not mind about the man's
abuse; but I confess I grudge my twopence. I have observed, too, that
the people who send letters unpaid do so habitually. I have known the
same individual send six successive letters unpaid. And it is
probably within the experience of most of my readers, that, out of
(say) a hundred correspondents, ninety-nine invariably pay their
letters properly, while time after time the hundredth sends his with
the abominable big 2 stamped upon it, and your servant walks in and
worries you by the old statement that the postman is waiting. Let me
advise every reader to do what I intend doing for the future: to wit,
to refuse to receive any unpaid letter. You may be quite sure that by
so doing you will not lose any letter that is worth having. A class of
people, very closely analogous to that of the people who do not pay
their letters, is that of such as are constantly borrowing small sums
from their friends, which they never restore. If you should ever be
thrown into the society of such, your right course will be to take
care to have no money in your pocket. People are disagreeable who are
given to talking of the badness of their servants, the undutifulness
of their children, the smokiness of their chimneys, and the deficiency
of their digestive organs. And though, with a true and close friend,
it is a great relief, and a special tie, to have spoken out your heart
about your burdens and sorrows, it is expedient, in conversation with
ordinary acquaintances, to keep these to yourself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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