Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 July 1877 — Devotees of Self. [ARTICLE]

Devotees of Self.

Thebe are certain people who come into being with an understanding that the world was made for Csesar, and Csesar means themselves. They are detennined to have what they want m this life,' and usually carry out their determination at all hazards. They cannot conceive that any thing is of more importance than their wishes; and they become in time, if they are not from the first, such utter incarnations of selfishness that everybody and everything give way to them; their selfishness attains such proportions that it borrows of sublimity, and nobody dreams of gainsaying it. If they want a thing, they must have it, let who will go without it; if they are happy, nobody else must show a gloomy face; if they will play, let those work that dare; if they are sad, the world is turned topsy-turvy ; if they are sick, there is no health in us. Theirs is seldom, on the whole, a noisy selfishness; a very few storms in the be-

ginning do all the business, and there it little occasion for more. The child bangs its head a little about the floor when it is a couple of years old; and Its mother, disliking to see that banging repeated, takes care that there shall be nothing to induce it, A few years later, exasperated by some resistance, it perhaps fifes at its guardian like a wildcat, although storing short of blow or bite—and we have known the guardian thus intimidated to be the mother—showing itself capable of administering punishment, even if it fails to ad. minister further than the fright and horror and grief; and the exasperation is eeldom repeated. One or two subsequent outbursts, to show, possibly, that the na. ture remains the same, and the privileges are not to be tampered with; and thenceforth there is no more attempt to oppose the party, except it be in the case of lire or death, than there would be to take hold of the lightning-rod in a thunder-storm. One feels that there is always thunder in that sky, and ready to fall, although the sunshine when undisturbed is so completely sunshine, so warm and bright and pleasant, that one is willing to make almost any sacrifice that will keep the weather clear. For these selfish people are selfish because they want to be happy, and they are happier in the atmosphere of good nature and general content than in that of recrimination and gloom; and when they have the best chair, the most attention, the first chance at the newspaper, at the last novel, at the new fancy-work patterns, the back seat of the coach, the choice cut at table—the chief consideration every way, in short, and all the little accessories of pride and comfort that habit has declared theirs by right—then they are in the best of humors, and expect everybody else to be so likewise. There is always some excellent reason for the tyranny of these devotees of self. They ought to have the best chair; they have the lame back, or they get tired more easily, or their strength needs to be husbanded, or they are delicato anyway, or else they always have had it, and they are not comfortable in any other, while those who never have had it of course will not feel the difference. Then they should have the novel first; it doesn’t take them so long to read it; they mentioned it first, and wanted it most; they can’t bear to have it after everybody else has read it, and knows just what they are feeling at just this or that page, and nobody else cares about that, they expect it first, which nobody else does; they are the oldest, and have a right as such, or they are the youngest, and ought to be considered, and so on. They should have the choice cut at table: their appetite is the most fastidious ; they can’t eat everything the way some people can; that is the most nutritious, and it is well known that they need the most nutritious; nobody else*seems to care for it, and everybody knows they want it. Of course everybody knows they want it! They have taken precious good care of that. That want is a light they have not hidden under a bushel; it has been “ announced by all the trumpets of the sky.” They never eat any but the dark meat, whether there is dark meat enough to give the rest a tidbit of it or not; or they want the liver-wing, let who else will prefer it; the beef must be so underdone that the rest of the family must learn to like it or go without it, so tka they shall be pleased, or so overdone that for all the others it is “ done to death,’ 7 in order that they may not be vexed by seeing the blood run; certain dishes never can be had at all at the table where they sit, because the condiments, such as garlic, are disgusting to them, whether desirable to others or not; and certain vegetables must never be cooked in the house under any circumstances, because they cannot and will not endure their smell. *And for the rest—the back seat in the coach, for instance -why, it makes them sick to drive the other way, and that disturbs their whole day. What it it makes otkers sick ? They would stare with amazement at the idea; what is that them ? they cannot afford to be sick if it does. Evidently, if unconsciously, their business here is with number one, and not two, three, and four; while as to the little accessories of comfort and pride, they will tell you, if you presume to question, that they are things which nobody else thinks of; that they are not set apart for others, because others are not sensitive enough to appreciate and desire such refinements; and in the matter of receiving the most attention and the chief consideration, certainly that is not their fault if'people choose to pay it to them; others must make themselves agreeable, too. Tool A brief word, but it expresses a Seat portion of the gospel of life beived by these people. It. means that they are all they should be, that they have a right to all they get, and that others may have the surplusage, all that is left over, what they do not want themselves. It means that they are first, and others come afterward; that they acquire their right and their possession by much the same prescriptive virtue as that of the divine right of kings; they cannot say why it is, only that it is. Heaven gave the nature with these demands, Heaven obliges others to satisfy these demands. Perhaps all this does not do so much harm as at first appears to the rest of us—we others who are not the selfish ones, who have none of this sublime self-wor-ship, and make not one of these preposterous claims. For we, at any rate, who live under the spell, are in no danger of being like our tyrants, not only by reason of any dislike wad disgust we may feel, but through sheer impossibility of getting a chance to do likewise. It is a fact as universally to be observed as any of the material phenomena of nature, that a selfish mother make an unselfish daughter, while its reverse is very nearly as true; for if an unselfish mother does not always make a selfish daughter, it is because the beauty of unselfishness is contagious, and not because the daughter has not her chance of becoming selfish, and gratifying her own desires to tbe exclusion of others. The selfish mother, who exacts everything, leaves nothing for the child to exact till her torn comes, and by that time her habits of surrender are so entirely formed that ahe has forgotten herself, and strives only for the happiness of some one else—it used to be her mother, and now it is another. And in reality she is far the happier of the two, for the pleasure of pleasing one’s self can never last beyond the moment of the receipt of the pleasure, but the pleasure of pleasing others lasts for days and yean, and carries on its good work to be added to the good work of the eternities. — Harper's Bazar. —John Chinaman is very particular about paying all his debts on his New Year oay. Bo honest is he about it that he will even steal to get the money. One heathen arrested in Ban Francisco for that explained the thlng, and added that after that New Year all Chinamen were honest. —The newest, dressy trimming for the neck is a boa made of white lace studded with small flowers, such as violets, myosotis or lilac.