" It really seems almost as if
the longer he stayed away,--hours, days, weeks even,--the happier she
were. By this sweet and wise unselfishness she has succeeded in realizing
the whole blessedness of wifehood far more than most women who have
health. But we doubt if any century sees more than one such woman as she
is.
Another large class, next to that of invalids the most difficult to deal
with, is made up of people who are by nature or by habit uncomfortably
sensitive or irritable. Who has not lived at one time or other in his life
in daily contact with people of this sort,--persons whose outbreaks of
temper, or of wounded feeling still worse than temper, were as
incalculable as meteoric showers? The suppressed atmosphere, the chronic
state of alarm and misgiving, in which the victims of this species of
tyranny live are withering and exhausting to the stoutest hearts. They are
also hardening; perpetually having to wonder and watch how people will
"take" things is apt sooner or later to result in indifference as to
whether they take them well or ill.
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