others.  Why should not their neighbors continue miserable, when they had been miserable all their lives hitherto?  Those who, on the contrary, had been comfortable all their lives, and liked it so much, ought to continue comfortable—­even at their expense.  Why not let well alone?  Or if people would be so unreasonable as to want to be comfortable too, when nobody cared a straw about them, let them make themselves comfortable without annoying those superior beings who had been comfortable all the time!—­Persons who, consciously or unconsciously, reason thus, would do well to read with a little attention the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, wherein it seems recognized that a man’s having been used to a thing may be just the reason, not for the continuance, but for the alteration of his condition.  In the present case the person who most found himself aggrieved, was the dishonest butcher.  A piece of brick wall which the minister had built in contact with the wall of his yard, would indubitably cause such a rise in the water at the descent into the area of his cellar, that, in order to its protection in a moderate flood—­in a great one the cellar was always filled—­the addition to its defense of two or three more rows of bricks would be required, carrying a correspondent diminution of air and light.  It is one of the punishments overtaking those who wrong their neighbors, that not only do they feel more keenly than others any injury done to themselves, but they take many things for injuries that do not belong to the category.  It was but a matter of a few shillings at the most, but the man who did not scruple to charge the less careful of his customers for undelivered ounces, gathering to pounds and pounds of meat, resented bitterly the necessity of the outlay.  He knew, or ought to have known, that he had but to acquaint the minister with the fact, to have the thing set right at once; but the minister had found him out, and he therefore much preferred the possession of his grievance to its removal.  To his friends he regretted that a minister of the gospel should be so corrupted by the mammon of unrighteousness as to use it against members of his own church:  that, he said, was not the way to make friends with it.  But on the pretense of a Christian spirit, he avoided showing Mr. Drake any sign of his resentment; for the face of his neighbors shames a man whose heart condemns him but shames him not.  He restricted himself to grumbling, and brooded to counterplot the mischiefs of the minister.  What right had he to injure him for the sake of the poor?  Was it not written in the Bible:  Thou shall not favor the poor man in his cause?  Was it not written also:  For every man shall bear his own burden?  That was common sense!  He did his share in supporting the poor that were church-members, but was he to suffer for improvements on Drake’s property for the sake of a pack of roughs!  Let him be charitable at his own cost! etc., etc.  Self is prolific in argument.