----: give her a little
more common sense; and teach her to dress a little less like a tragedy
queen than she does at present"?
* * * * *
But who shall reckon up the countless circumstances which lie like a
depressing burden on the energies of men, and make them work at that
disadvantage which we have thought of under the figure of _carrying
weight in life?_ There are men who carry weight in a damp, marshy
neighborhood, who, amid bracing mountain air might have done things
which now they will never do. There are men who carry weight in an
uncomfortable house: in smoky chimneys: in a study with a dismal
look-out: in distance from a railway-station: in ten miles between them
and a bookseller's shop. Give another hundred a year of income, and the
poor struggling parson who preaches dull sermons will astonish you
by the talent he will exhibit when his mind is freed from the dismal
depressing influence of ceaseless scheming to keep the wolf from the
door. Let the poor little sick child grow strong and well, and with
how much better heart will its father face the work of life! Let the
clergyman who preached, in a spiritless enough way, to a handful of
uneducated rustics, be placed in a charge where weekly he has to address
a large cultivated congregation, and, with the new stimulus, latent
powers may manifest themselves which no one fancied he possessed, and he
may prove quite an eloquent and attractive preacher.
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