VARIETIES.
Other People’s Vanity.—What renders the vanity of others insupportable is that it wounds our own.—La Rochefoucauld.
Busy with Trifles.—Those who bestow too much application on trifling things become generally incapable of great ones.—La Rochefoucauld.
Heads and Hearts.—A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head, but a corrupt woman is lost for ever.—Coleridge.
Love-Letters.—To write a good love-letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say and to finish without knowing what you have written.—Rousseau.
Lovers’ Talk.—The reason why lovers are never weary of being together is because they are always talking of themselves.
A Tale of a Yorkshire Wife.
TheYorkshire people of the West Riding, according to Mrs. Gaskell, are “sleuth hounds” after money, and in illustration of this characteristic we may take the following anecdote:—
Not far from Bradford an old couple lived on their farm. The good man had been ill for some time, when the practitioner who attended him advised that a physician should be summoned from Bradford for a consultation.
The doctor came, looked into the case, gave his opinion, and, descending from the sick-room to the kitchen, was there accosted by the old woman with “Well, doctor, what is your charge?”
“My fee is a guinea.”
“A guinea, doctor! a guinea! And if you come again will it be another guinea?”
“Yes.”
“A guinea, doctor! Hech!”
The old woman rose and went upstairs to her husband’s bedroom, and the doctor, who waited below, heard her say—
“He charges a guinea, and if he comes again it’ll be another guinea. Now, what do you say? If I were ye I’d say no, like a Britoner; and I’d die first.”
Pleasant Surprises.—Human nature is pliable, and perhaps the pleasantest surprises of life are found in discovering the things we can do when forced.
An Obstacle to Happiness.—There is in all of us an impediment to perfect happiness—namely, weariness of the things which we possess and a desire for the things which we have not.