There are some persons, in fact, a great many persons, who are not happy unless they have real or fancied cause for complaint. Martyrdom is the recreation of such people and they are liable to be more greedy for recreation than those whose recreation is of a joyous sort.

It is certainly a misplaced kindness to impose unwelcome attentions on any one. In the category of nuisances unwelcome attentions are perhaps the most disagreeable, and to cram joy down the maw of one who has no taste for it, is as rude, and even vulgar, as insisting that he shall eat something that is nauseating to him.

It is true that persons who gloat over misery; who love to mope about in grave-yards; and are forever telling grewsome tales for the supposed delectation of their victims, are not as agreeable to others as they seem to be to themselves, and their presence at festivals and other ostensibly joyous occasions may be looked on as discordant, and, as such, out of place.

In these times of license, which are sometime mistaken for times of unusual liberty, it is not for anyone to define what is altogether bad, nor to confine good, nor good taste, within too narrow limits; neither is it generous to prescribe anything that shall be universally eaten or worn; and, above all liberties, the liberty to wear a smile or a frown should prevail; but it is within the province of organized society to put its stamp of approval or disapproval on the time and place for appropriate use of them. Certain costumes are suitable in certain places and not suitable in others. For example, the bathing suit and the night-robe have uses that are appropriate for their special purposes, but they would not be tolerated on the street by the police, and it would be no greater curtailment of liberty to order that frowns shall be worn only in dark places and not be permitted to cloud the sunlight, than that undue levity should be tabooed on occasions considered to be serious. If such prescription were to be imposed, it would be necessary, of course, to furnish dark places at appropriate, or, rather, convenient intervals, for the use of the miserably inclined, in the same way that spittoons are provided for the use of those who must expectorate sputum.

Liberty is so precious a thing that it must be protected as the holiest of our possessions, and even if it lap over into the debatable ground sometimes called license, it should yet be protected, and therefore the permission to wear frowns in appropriate places and to enjoy being miserable in the privacy of one's own chamber should be respected; on the street, or anywhere in public, however, they should not be tolerated, for they are harmful generally, and particularly injurious to children.

As individuals, those of us who accept God's promises as truths, who prefer to live in the sunlight rather than in a cave, who glorify Appreciation as the first and best suggestion in the language, who believe that growth is the object of life, that its fallow field is harmony, and that its fruit is happiness, and also those of us who, by comparison of conditions have learned to believe that our pessimistic friends can be happier than they are, and can become better companions and citizens by a change of attitude towards life, although we may not pass laws of restriction against the frown-habit or against the misery-habit, can use the gentle method of counter-suggestion to good effect, and even go so far as to laugh at and otherwise ridicule the misery-habit, if by thus doing we may possibly correct that which logic has failed to cure.

From long observation it has become evident that the misery-habit feeds on sympathy. Children, who are the best examples of honest expression that we have, whereby to see ourselves in an unartificial light, will not continue a mad or a surly crying spell if they are sure it is not producing a sympathetic effect. If they think they are not heard they will at once cease crying. In the same way, grown persons who practice the misery-habit in public take a rest when they are unobserved. They try to hide it, but they are frequently caught in the act of unbuttoning their pouts, and thereby allowing their faces a rest, as soon as they have thought themselves out of sight. We must believe, if this observation be correct, that the object of pessimism, or, the misery-habit, is generally to secure, by dishonest means, selfish attentions that are not earned, and for which no value is given. There are cases no doubt where the misery-habit has been acquired by contact with respected ones who have been the cause of perverse suggestions too strong to be resisted, and for such there can only be pity, and in the cure of whom gentle and loving suggestion should be used, but to the perverse and the chronic practicers of the misery-habit, no toleration is good, for it is on that, and unmerited sympathy, that they live and thrive. On such, all of the misery possible to be scraped up from the discords of life should be dumped, and they should be condemned to herd together, and if it were possible, they should be isolated, as lepers are isolated, from healthy society.

Sometimes the victim of the misery-habit practices the habit only within the family. This is especially severe on the family, and is much more difficult to treat. The family is at once the seat of the greatest liberty, and the home and breeding-ground of the greatest tyranny. The family is supposed to be under the holy protection of the divine principle of love, but if that principle is not a possession of the family, there is no protection whatever from most inhuman practices, but instead a license to the cultivation of most discordant passions. It is in the family that mollygrubs are grown and tolerated. It is in the family that one cannot get rid of them by running away, for the family, like the poor, you have with you always. And who would have it otherwise? The whole tendency of civilization is to appreciate the family more and more, and to cultivate respect for the family model as the basis of good government. But it is the very security of the natural, and therefore indissoluble, bonds that gives the selfishly inclined opportunity to practice the misery-habit without fear of being thrown out, left behind, cremated or otherwise gotten rid of, as dead and disagreeable matter is usually treated, in civilized communities.

The symptoms of the misery-habit, or martyr-habit, are easy to detect, for while they may be cultivated and laboriously practiced in private, they are intended to be seen, and are displayed at times when they are calculated to be most conspicuous. The victim of the martyr-habit is usually an industrious person. He, or possibly she, will perform any amount of necessary, and even unnecessary, manual labor, in order to exhibit martyr-like fatigue; is always hanging behind in order to be slighted; condemns attentions honestly intended as perfunctory politeness; interprets praise as being patronage; finds any part of a chicken served him at the family table the worst piece, and at the same time assures the carver that he has been unduly partial or over-generous—but, with a tone of voice or an expression of countenance that belies the utterance. A common phrase of the afflicted martyrite is, "Don't mind me," and hysterics is the favorite amusement, while pain and trouble are the chief stock in trade. And is there a remedy? Yes.

If Christianity were to be measured by the optimism of the Master, if the gauge of optimism prescribed by the Master were to be used to measure professing Christians for the name; if cause and effect were to be placed in their true relation to each other, and the ills we cultivate were to be classed as self-imposed causes and not effects; and if the unnecessary and unprofitable were to be ranked as not-respectable; the misery-habit or martyr-habit would cease to be fashionable, mollygrubs would disappear, and the principal breeding-ground of pessimism—the family—would be purified, as becoming to its holy office.