I sometimes think those are blessed who are endowed with a coarse organization. Sensitive people are chronic martyrs. Their nerves are so many toes, that their neighbors and friends are perpetually treading on. Not only are the pangs of such more acute, but the occasions of injury are infinitely multiplied by super-susceptibility. Talk of the happy hours of childhood! Ask nine persons out of ten, who are of susceptible organization, at what period in life their sufferings were most intense and unremitting, and if they be gifted with good memories, their reply will be, 'before adolescence.'[3] For susceptibility of nerve implies also high mental capability, acute intelligence, vivid imagination, all of which go to intensify sensation, and thus to aggravate the mischief. And our sympathy is due to one who by one of those strange contradictions in human nature finds herself, a highly nervous creature, the victim of an affection for one of the coarser organizations to which I have alluded. I say victim, for such attachments seldom result happily. The effect produced, in the first instance, by the magnetism of a strong over a weak nature gradually dies away. With it die the brilliant colors in which the beloved has been invested by the belover, and life is thenceforward only lit up by the lamps that heaven sets in the eyes of the little children that sometimes cheer the darkness of these ill-assorted unions. * * * * * --'SIR WE ARE TOO POOR TO BE ECONOMICAL.' These were the words which I once heard a woman use to a rich relative of her husband, who had followed up his refusal of assistance by allusions to many little short-comings which he had noted in the domestic details of the family. The phrase seems to involve a contradiction; but a little consideration will show even the most superficial thinker that it expresses a truth. Great is the power of ready money. Ready money can save by wholesale purchases. Ready money can save by choice of place of purchase. Ready money can save by choice of proper time for purchase. Ready money can save by discount obtained under threat of discontinuance of trade; a threat futile in the mouths of the poor. Ready money can save in furniture and wearing apparel, by being able to provide the best in fabric and construction, and therefore the most lasting. But it is needless to extend the catalogue of ready money's powers. None know them better than those who seldom are able to obtain their aid. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 3: Quevedo has broadly satirized his faith in 'Childhood's happy hour'. In his _Visions of Hell_, where Satan, wearied by the continual grumbling of the condemned, requests them to leave, go back to life, be born again, and live it all over. On due reflection, they conclude that rather than suffer the whippings, schoolings, and scoldings incident to boy and girlhood, they--would prefer to stay where they were.--NOTE BY EDITOR.] SKETCHES OF THE ORIENT.