Still, you
cannot help looking with a certain interest upon those people who, by
the want of these hindering influences, are enabled to do things and
say things which you never could. I have sometimes looked with no small
curiosity upon the kind of man who will come uninvited, and without
warning of his approach, to stay at another man's house: who will stay
on, quite comfortable and unmoved, though seeing plainly he is not
wanted: who will announce, on arriving, that his visit is to be for
three days, and who will then, without farther remark, and without
invitation of any kind, remain for a month or six weeks: and all
the while sit down to dinner every day with a perfectly easy and
unembarrassed manner. You and I, my reader, would rather live on much
less than sixpence a day than do all this. We _could not_ do it. But
some people not merely can do it, but can do it without any appearance
of effort. Oh, if the people who are victimized by these horse-leeches
of society could but gain a little of the thickness of skin which
characterizes the horse-leeches, and bid them be off, and not return
again till they are invited! To the same pachydermatous class belong
those individuals who will put all sorts of questions as to the private
affairs of other people, but carefully shy off from any similar
confidence as to their own affairs: also those individuals who borrow
small sums of money and never repay them, but go on borrowing till the
small sums amount to a good deal.
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