4IO MORE POT-POURRI 



When one is young, one thinks just the contrary, and 

 people are very apt to say : ' If I have a passion, why 

 should I hide it under a bushel? So long as there is 

 no concealment there is no harm.' This kind of argu- 

 ment may take people into very deep water. A parent 

 of reserved nature rather encourages concealment in the 

 children, and indeed thinks it 'beautiful,' forgetting 

 that the children may inherit from the other side of the 

 family a need for sympathy and the expression of affec- 

 tion, and that these are as absolutely necessary to some 

 natures as food for the body. In my experience, I can 

 most honestly say that the people who have done best in 

 life are those whose temperament has enabled them to 

 talk out their difficulties with friends or relatives, and 

 who have learned to ask advice . Advice should be taken 

 to develop one's own judgment — and, as I said before, 

 need never be followed. It is useful to understand how 

 matters strike other people who are not personally con- 

 cerned. The non- understanding of this is often the 

 cause of a bad influence being exercised by one sex over 

 the other. It is more easy to pardon faults than to for- 

 give those who assume virtues they do not possess. 



The mere forming of one's trouble into words makes 

 it seem lighter to bear. We have all sometimes, if not 

 often, known the extreme worry experienced on waking 

 because of some trivial thing we have done or left un- 

 done, which disappears entirely or assumes its proper 

 proportions after our morning bath. Talking out to a 

 friend often plays the part of the bath. 



I can trace a change in my whole life from the kind- 

 ness of a Jewish old maid to me when I was a precocious 

 little monster of ten years old. We were at Leghorn 

 during a fearful earthquake, and the hotel where we 

 were staying, though not actually thrown down, was so 

 shaken and injured as to be considered unsafe to live in. 



