but for the wofulest, when he shall prove his claim to it."

The guest earliest bidden to the festival was a man of soft and
gentle character, who had not energy to struggle against the heavy
despondency to which his temperament rendered him liable; and
therefore with nothing outwardly to excuse him from happiness, he
had spent a life of quiet misery that made his blood torpid, and
weighed upon his breath, and sat like a ponderous night-fiend upon
every throb of his unresisting heart. His wretchedness seemed as
deep as his original nature, if not identical with it. It was the
misfortune of a second guest to cherish within his bosom a diseased
heart, which had become so wretchedly sore that the continual and
unavoidable rubs of the world, the blow of an enemy, the careless
jostle of a stranger, and even the faithful and loving touch of a
friend, alike made ulcers in it. As is the habit of people thus
afflicted, he found his chief employment in exhibiting these
miserable sores to any who would give themselves the pain of viewing
them. A third guest was a hypochondriac, whose imagination wrought
necromancy in his outward and inward world, and caused him to see
monstrous faces in the household fire, and dragons in the clouds of
sunset, and fiends in the guise of beautiful women, and something
ugly or wicked beneath all the pleasant surfaces of nature. His
neighbor at table was one who, in his early youth, had trusted
mankind too much, and hoped too highly in their behalf, and, in
meeting with many disappointments, had become desperately soured.
For several years back this misanthrope bad employed himself in
accumulating motives for hating and despising his race,--such as
murder, lust, treachery, ingratitude, faithlessness of trusted
friends, instinctive vices of children, impurity of women, hidden
guilt in men of saint-like aspect,--and, in short, all manner of