Supersensitive Persons And How They Get Worked Up To The Pitch Of Woe

From tlio London Standard. There was much kindly wisdom in Sir Walter Scott's advice to bis ! daughters to beware of proneness to ' take, aswellastogive, ofïense. Touch y : folka are trying companions. Over : sensitiveness (this is the charitable ■ description of a disposition -to be ! fended at trifles) is, perhaps, ratlier a ; modern than an ancient weakness, ■ though history presenta a fair list of people who were as fallible in this speet asany of their later descendant, j Could any touchiness exceed that of i Robert, duke of Normandy? ing to Holinshed, the king trying on a newcloák, with a hood, and flnding it ' too tight forhim.directed that the garment should be taken to his brother (the duke), who was a smaller man. A light rent, however, had been mado in the garment, and the duke perceiving t and hearing that thecloak had been tried on by the king, indignantly exciaimed: "Now I perceive 1 have lived too long, since my brother clothes me like an almsman in his cast, rent garments," and refusing all food starved himself to death. Touchy must have been the mediseval Germán baron who directed that bis body should be baried upright in a pillar that no base person should walk over his stomach. Still, instances like these were rather the eception than the rule in days of yore. There is a story of a Scotch minister preaching against the evils of falsehood, being interrupted by the parish idiot, who exclaimed in an aagrieved tone, "I dinna seo why ye suld be sae hard on me, Mr. . I'm surethere's mair liars in the parish than me." The worthy divine had intended no Eersonal allusions, but the idiot elonged to the ranks of the touchy ones. What social agonies are often undergone by hosts and hostesses in shielding a touchy guest from the attacks of a good natured but hopeless blunderer. They know too well how the former is appropriating as studied insult all the airy remarks which the blunderer is makins in happy innorance of the feeling ot hislisteners. For the blunderer is the exact opposite of the touchy person; thelatter is too sensitive.the former too obtuse. The touchy one leads hidden meanina8 where none are intended; the blunderer Í3 deaf and blind to the plainest hints. Few people possess the kindly sense of the French abbe mentioned in the memoirs of Madame Vigee de Brun, the celebrated portrait painter of the last century. This gentleman was, unfortunately, extremely deformed, and, playing at cards with him, Madame de Brun was so struck by his strange figure that she inadvertently hummed a few bars of a tune called "The Hunchback." Immediately recollactinij herself she stopped in confusión, whereupon the abbe turned to her with a kindly smile, "My deurmadI ame, continué your tuno. I assure ! you it does not offend me in the least; the association is 80 natural a one that I believe it would have occurred to me in your place." A little post-bellum incident hapj pened in New Orleans illustrating the brotherhood of once contending foes. On the battlefield of Shiloh twentyfive years a?o a Union soldier found a Confedérate wounded and gave him in 1 charge of the surgeons. The acquaint anee was supposed to be at an end, but the Northern man recently visiting the Southerner, and over a quiet little dinner they discussed the battle in fraternal interest.