Now, could there be anything more absurd than that? To see a woman
annoyed; to see her recognize that she was uselessly and foolishly
annoyed, and yet to see that she makes not the slightest effort to
get over her annoyance.

It is like the woman who discovered that she spoke aloud in church,
and was so surprised that she exclaimed: "Why, I spoke out loud in
church!" and then, again surprised, she cried: "Why, I keep speaking
aloud in church!"--and it did not occur to her to stop.

My friend would have refused an invitation to supper, I truly
believe, if she had known that Mrs. Smith would be there and her
hostess would have baked beans. She was really a slave to Mrs.
Smith's way of eating baked beans.

"Well, I do not blame her," I hear some reader say; "it is entirely
out of place to eat sugar on baked beans. Why shouldn't she be
annoyed?"

I answer: "Why should she be annoyed? Will her annoyance stop Mrs.
Smith's eating sugar on baked beans? Will she in any way--selfish or
otherwise--be the gainer for her annoyance? Furthermore, if it were
the custom to eat sugar on baked beans, as it is the custom to put
sugar in coffee, this woman would not have been annoyed at all. It
was simply the fact of seeing Mrs. Smith digress from the ordinary
course of life that annoyed her."

It is the same thing that makes a horse shy. The horse does not say
to himself, "There is a large carriage, moving with no horse to pull