don't like to hear him bellow: and next Sunday you will observe
that he shuts up his hymn-book in dudgeon, and will not sing at
all. Leave the blockhead to himself Do not set yourself to stroke
down his self-conceit: he knows quite well he is doing wrong:
there is neither sense nor honesty in what he does. You remark at
dinner, while staying with a silly old gentleman, that the plum-pudding,
though admirable, perhaps errs on the side of over-richness; next
day he sets before you a mass of stiff paste with no plums at
all, and says, with a look of sly stupidity, 'Well, I hope you are
satisfied now.' Politeness prevents your replying, 'No, you don't.
You know that is not what I meant. You are a fool.' You remember
the boy in Pickwick, who on his father finding fault with him for
something wrong he had done, offered to kill himself if that would
be any satisfaction to his parent. In this case you have a more
recondite instance of this peculiar folly. Here the primary course
is tacitly assumed, without being stated. The primary impulse of
the human being is to take care of himself; the opposite of that
of course is to kill himself. And the boy, being chidden for doing
something which might rank under the general head of taking care
of himself, proposed (as that course appeared unsatisfactory) to
take the opposite one. 'You don't take exercise enough,' said a
tutor to a wrong-headed boy who was under his care: 'you ought to
walk more.' Next morning the perverse fellow entered the breakfast
parlour in a fagged condition, and said, with the air of a martyr,
'Well, I trust I have taken exercise enough to-day: I have walked
twenty miles this morning.' As for all such manifestations of the
disposition to run into opposite extremes, let them be treated as
manifestations of pettedness, perversity, and dishonesty. In some
cases a high-spirited youth may be excused them; but, for the
most part, they come with doggedness, wrong-headedness, and dense