The fact probably is, that he has always, man
and boy, been particularly well-behaved, and that really you were not
aware that he needed any special improvement,--save, indeed, in the
sense that every human being might be and ought to be a great deal
better than he is.
People who are always vaporing about their own importance, and the
value of their own possessions, are disagreeable. We all know such
people: and they are made more irritating by the fact, that their
boasting is almost invariably absurd and false. I do not mean
ethically false, but logically false. For doubtless, in many cases,
human beings honestly think themselves and their possessions as much
better than other men and their possessions as they say they do. If
thirty families compose the best society of a little country-town, you
may be sure that each of the thirty families in its secret soul looks
down upon the other twenty-nine, and fancies that it stands on a
totally different level. And it is a kind arrangement of Providence,
that a man's own children, horses, house, and other possessions, are
so much more interesting to himself than are the children, horses, and
houses of other men, that he can readily persuade himself that they
are as much better in fact as they are more interesting to his
personal feeling.
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