The writer of this once traveled for days with an intelligent curmudgeon, who made himself at all points as prickly as the porcupine.  There was no getting on with him.  And yet when he dropped out of the party he was sorely missed.  He was more attractively repulsive than the sea-lion.  It was such a luxury to hate him.  He was such a counter-irritant, such a stimulant; such a flavor he gave to life.  We are always on the lookout for the odd, the eccentric, the whimsical.  We pretend that we like the orderly, the beautiful, the pleasant.  We can find them anywhere—­the little bits of scenery that please the eye, the pleasant households, the group of delightful people.  Why travel, then?  We want the abnormal, the strong, the ugly, the unusual at least.  We wish to be startled and stirred up and repelled.  And we ought to be more thankful than we are that there are so many desolate and wearisome and fantastic places, and so many tiresome and unattractive people in this lovely world.

GIVING AS A LUXURY

There must be something very good in human nature, or people would not experience so much pleasure in giving; there must be something very bad in human nature, or more people would try the experiment of giving.  Those who do try it become enamored of it, and get their chief pleasure in life out of it; and so evident is this that there is some basis for the idea that it is ignorance rather than badness which keeps so many people from being generous.  Of course it may become a sort of dissipation, or more than that, a devastation, as many men who have what are called “good wives” have reason to know, in the gradual disappearance of their wardrobe if they chance to lay aside any of it temporarily.  The amount that a good woman can give away is only measured by her opportunity.  Her mind becomes so trained in the mystery of this pleasure that she experiences no thrill of delight in giving away only the things her husband does not want.  Her office in life is to teach him the joy of self-sacrifice.  She and all other habitual and irreclaimable givers soon find out that there is next to no pleasure in a gift unless it involves some self-denial.

Let one consider seriously whether he ever gets as much satisfaction out of a gift received as out of one given.  It pleases him for the moment, and if it is useful, for a long time; he turns it over, and admires it; he may value it as a token of affection, and it flatters his self-esteem that he is the object of it.  But it is a transient feeling compared with that he has when he has made a gift.  That substantially ministers to his self-esteem.  He follows the gift; he dwells upon the delight of the receiver; his imagination plays about it; it will never wear out or become stale; having parted with it, it is for him a lasting possession.  It is an investment as lasting as that in the debt of England.  Like a good deed, it grows, and is continually satisfactory.