you come home in,—­muddy, limp, chilled, disheartened!  The house greets you, looking also muddy and cold,—­for the best of front halls gives up in despair and cannot look any thing but forlorn in a long, drizzling rain; all the windows are bleared with trickling, foggy wet on the outside, which there is no wiping off nor seeing through, and if one could see through there is no gain.  The street is more gloomy than the house; black, slimy mud, inches deep on crossings; the same black, slimy mud in footprints on side-walks; hopeless-looking people hurrying by, so unhappy by reason of the drizzle that a weird sort of family likeness is to be seen in all their faces.  This is all that can be seen outside.  It is better not to look.  For the inside is no redemption except a wood-fire,—­a good, generous wood-fire,—­not in any of the modern compromises called open stoves, but on a broad stone hearth, with a big background of chimney, up which the sparks can go skipping and creeping.

This can redeem a drizzle; but this cannot redeem a grumbler.  Plump he sits down in the warmth of its very blaze, and complains that it snaps, perhaps, or that it is oak and maple, when he paid for all hickory.  You can trust him to put out your wood-fire for you as effectually as a water-spout.  And, if even a wood-fire, bless it! cannot outshine the gloom of his presence, what is to happen in the places where there is no wood-fire, on the days when real miseries, big and little, are on hand, to be made into mountains of torture by his grumbling?  Oh, who can describe him?  There is no language which can do justice to him; no supernatural foresight which can predict where his next thrust will fall, from what unsuspected corner he will send his next arrow.  Like death, he has all seasons for his own; his ingenuity is infernal.  Whoever tries to forestall or appease him might better be at work in Augean stables; because, after all, we must admit that the facts of life are on his side.  It is not intended that we shall be very comfortable.  There is a terrible amount of total depravity in animate and inanimate things.  From morning till night there is not an hour without its cross to carry.  The weather thwarts us; servants, landlords, drivers, washerwomen, and bosom friends misbehave; clothes don’t fit; teeth ache; stomachs get out of order; newspapers are stupid; and children make too much noise.  If there are not big troubles, there are little ones.  If they are not in sight, they are hiding.  I have wondered whether the happiest mortal could point to one single moment and say, “At that moment there was nothing in my life which I would have had changed.”  I think not.