A humane condescension to instinct has lately supplied ladies' lapdogs with an ingenious instrument of mock torture, in the shape of an india-rubber head which hops about the room on the smallest persuasion, and squeaks shrilly when caught and worried. The animal has thus the pleasure of mauling something which seems to suffer from the process; while in reality it hurts nothing, but expends its tormenting energy on a quite unfeeling creature, whose _raison d'être_ it is to be worried and made to squeak. It would be well for some of us if those people who must have something to worry would be content with a creature analogous to the lapdog's india-rubber head. It would do just as well for them, and it would save us who feel a great deal of real pain. Tippoo Sahib was a wise man when he caused his automaton to be made, in which a tiger seemed to be tearing at the prostrate figure of a wooden European, and the group gave out mingled growls and groans at the turning of a handle in its side. It might have been a dismal fancy perhaps; but the fancy was better than the reality, and did quite as well for the purpose, which was that the monarch should keep himself in good humour by the charm of something to worry. There are few pains in life greater than the companionship of one of those ill-conditioned people who must have something to worry, and who are only happy with a grievance. No fortune, no fair possessions of love nor beauty, nor what one would think must be the sources of intense happiness, are spells to exorcise the worrying spirit--opiates to allay the worrying fever. If in the midst of all they have to make them blessed among the sons of men, there hops the squeaking ball, in an instant every good thing belonging to them is forgotten, and there is nothing in heaven and earth but that one obtruding grievance, that one intolerable annoyance. Nothing is too small for them to make into a gigantic evil and be offended at accordingly. They will not endure with patience the minutest, nor the most inevitable, of the crosses of life--things which every one has to bear alike; which no one can help; and concerning which the only wisdom is to meet them with cheerfulness, tiding over the bad time as quietly as possible till things take a turn. Not they. They know the luxury of having something to complain of; and they like to feel wronged. The wind is in the east and they are personally injured; the rain has come on a pleasure day, or has not come in a seed-sowing week, and they fret grimly and make every one about them uncomfortable, as if the weather were a thing to be arranged at will, and a disappointing day were the result of wilful mismanagement. Life is a burden to them and all about them because the climate is uncertain and the elements are out of human control. They make themselves the most wretched of martyrs too, if they are in a country they do not like; and they never do like the country they are in.