Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 February 1875 — “The Black Dog on the Back.” [ARTICLE]

“The Black Dog on the Back.”

This is an old English proverb for a man or a woman in a bad temper. And it is a very forcible expression, for such are really as great nuisances to society as if they actually led about with them an animal subject to indiscriminate biting. Still, you will see that generally they are rather proud than otherwise of their failing; apt to plume themselves on their “quick tempers,” and to expect innumerable impertinences and impositions will be forgiven them in consideration of it. “They lose their tempers so easily.” That -is true enough; but if their friends will observe they will see that they do not so much lose their temper as exchange it for whatever at the time they particularly happen to want. Are they at home and desire to have everything ordered to their special likings and habits? Then they lose thfeir temper in order that they may gain every other person’s rights and peculiar comforts and fancies. In the world, too, if they Jose their tempeT, they contrive to gain far more than its equivalent. It is the good-natured man, not the bad one, who is imposed upon and has to do all the disagreeable things. Jf a bitter norther is blowing and the temperature below zero the good-naiured man of the firm will rather face the elements than the development of latent heat in his partner which a change from the cosy office to the freezing street would occasion. The extra hours, the disagreeable dunning, the humiliating asking for favors are never assigned to the bad-tempered man. It may of course be his duty, but he'has only to look black and mutter something about “seeing everybody blessed first" and he may go wheresoever and do whatsoever he chooses* It is the prerogative of such tempers not only to do ill-natured, SflUsh things, but also to scatter impertinences

wherever they think it safe to do so. They are les hommes terrible of the social existence. It is their delight, if they do not like a thing, to say so in the most decided manner; to tell unpleasant truths that do no good, simply because they desire to do so; to send meek and iLoffensive people out of their presence depressed and uncomfortable. The essential meanness of this disposition may be traced in the fact that it rarely or never shows itself to a superior. The hastytempered man knows very well how to control his temper in the presence of a man richer, more hasty or physically stronger than him Self. Now it must be admitted that the great nursery of such tempers is the domestic hearth. How overbearing brothers are to sisters! How provoking sisters are to brothers! They do not consider that the laws of polite restraint which govern them perforce in the world are necessary there. Each indulges his or her particular temper until the disagreeable habit becomes “natural.” The world has no just reason to excuse any man’s injustice or intemperate speech because he has an uncontrollable temper. Such tempers are very much rarer than is imagined. The average hasty tempered man never allows his temper to interfere with his pecuniary interests or his personal comforts; nor, however much he longs to do it, does he usually permit himself to strike the object of his anger, because blows are actionable, and he might be made to suffer. Therefore, if for his own sake he can control his hands, he ought to be made to feel it a necessity, for others’ sake, to control his tongue and his temper also.— Christian at Work.