About the most disagreeable people one meets with in life are those who make a business of complaining. They ask for sympathy when they merit censure. There is no excuse for man or woman making known their private griefs except to intimate friends or those who stand in the nearest relation to them. I have no patience with the man who wishes to catch the public ear with the sound of his repining. Be it that he complain of the world generally, or specify the particular occasion of his dumpishness, he is in either aspect equally contemptible. What a serio-comic spectacle a man presents who imagines that everybody is in a leagued conspiracy against him to disappoint his hopes and thwart his plans for success! He thinks he is kept from rising by some untoward fate that is bent on crushing him into the ground, feels that he is the victim of persecution, the sport of angry gods. Not having the spirit of a martyr, he frets and fumes about his condition, and finds a selfish relief in counting over his grievances in the presence of all who are good-natured enough to listen. Such a fellow is a social nuisance—away with him! The fact usually is that the world has more reason to complain of him than he of the world. For instance, I know a man who has become misanthropic, but who should hate himself instead of the whole race.

Mr. Jordan Algrieve has become disgusted with life, and confesses than his experiment with existence has thus far proved a failure. He has combated with the world, and the world has proved too much for him, and he acknowledges the defeat. Mr. Algrieve is on the shady side of fifty, and his hair getting to be of an iron gray. His features are prominent, with a face wrinkled and shrivelled by discontent and acidity of temper. His tall figure is bent, not so much by cares and weight of years, as in a kind of typical submission to the stern decree of an evil destiny.

Strange to say, he is well educated, and graduated with honor at one of our Eastern colleges. With a knowledge of this fact, it is pitiable to see him standing at the corner of the street in his busy town in a suit of seedy black and a shockingly bad hat, chafing his hands together and pretending to wait for somebody who never comes.

Poor Algrieve, he is a man under the table, and he knows it. He has tried to be somebody in his way, but has failed sadly in all his efforts. It is said that Algrieve always had a constitutional aversion to legitimate and continued labor, but has a passion for making strikes and securing positions that afford liberal pay for little work.

Thinking a profession too monotonous and plodding, he never took the trouble to acquire one. As to honest manual toil, that was an expedient he never so much as dreamed of. In early life he was so unfortunate as to secure an appointment to a clerkship in the Assembly, and after that he haunted the State Legislature for five or six winters in hot pursuit of another place, but his claims failing to be recognized, he relapsed into the natural belief that his party was in league to proscribe him. After making a large number of political ventures of a more ambitious order, and with the same mortifying results, he abandoned that field and took to speculation in patent rights. He vended a wonderful churn-dash, circulated a marvellous flatiron, and expatiated through the country on the latest improvement in the line of a washing machine. But these operations somehow afforded him but transient relief, and left him always involved still more largely in debt. At different times in his life he had also been a horse dealer, a dry-goods merchant, a saloon keeper, the proprietor of a tenpin alley, and managed to grow poorer in all these various occupations. The last I saw of him he was reduced to peddling books in a small way, carrying his whole stock in a new market basket. He was very importunate in his appeals to customers to purchase, putting it upon the ground that he had been unfortunate and had a claim to their charity. I happened to see him in the office of the popular hotel in Podgeville, when he was more than usually clamorous for patronage. He accosted nearly every man in the room with a dull, uninteresting volume in his hand, and for which he asked a respectable price. At last he set down his basket, and commenced a kind of snivelling harangue to his little audience. Mr. Algrieve opened by saying:

Here Mr. Algrieve produced a fragmentary pocket handkerchief for the ostensible purpose of absorbing an expected tear, but really to give his remark a tragic effect. He continued:

Mr. Algrieve here paused, and seemed to look down into the frightful gulf with a shuddering expression, as if he were not quite accustomed to the descent yet.

Some benevolent gentleman, either from a charitable motive, or to put an end to his lachrymose oration, bought the volume for $1.25. Mr. Algrieve received the money with many expressions of gratitude, and, gathering up his stock, moped off into the drinking room, and invested a dime in a gin cocktail, and five cents in a cigar, with which he sought to solace himself for all the inflictions of the inexorable world.

Thus Jordan Algrieve goes about telling of his reverses and misfortunes, exhibiting them to the public eye like a beggar his sores, without shame or remorse; seeking to levy contributions on his fellow men, as one who has been robbed of his estate. Reader, will you say that you have never met with Jordan Algrieve?

Another common species of the complaining bore are those who are continually parading their bodily infirmities. For example, a man will call on you, apparently for the express purpose of illustrating a most interesting case of neuralgia. He comes into your office, perhaps, with his head tied up in a handkerchief, and an expression of face as if he had some time winked one eye very close, and had never since been able to open it. Thinking himself an object worthy of study, he shows how the darting pains vacillate between his eyes, invade his teeth, hold general muster in his cheeks, take refuge in the back of his neck; and demonstrates these points to you by applying his hands to the parts designated, and uttering cries of feigned anguish to give effect to his description. He informs you, as a piece of refreshing intelligence, that it is devilish hard to bear, and enough to make a saint indulge in profanity. When he has proceeded thus far, he may be taken with one of his capricious pains, ducks his head between his knees, squeezes it with his hands, and bawls out: 'O-h! Je-ru-sa-lem!' with a duration of sound only limited by the capacity of his wind. He feels that he has a witness to his sufferings, and wishes to make the most of it. When he gets sufficiently easy, he tells you his experience with various remedies, enumerates all the lotions, liniments, ointments, and other applications he has used, with his opinion on the merits of each.

Another person will accost you on a bright day with a most saturnine and wo-begone visage, informing you that he is in a terrible way, that his food distresses him, and he can't any longer take comfort in eating. He places his hand in the region of his stomach, remarks that he feels a great load there, and makes the usual complaints of a dyspeptic. He is pathetic over the fact that his physician has denied him fried oysters and mince pie for evening lunch, and closes his observations by exclaiming in a moralizing vein that 'such is life!'

A third individual has a throat disease, and, forgetful of his bad breath, desires you to take a minute survey of his glottis, and inform him of its appearance. Accordingly he opens his mouth and throws back his head as if he were inviting you to an entertaining show.

These are but a tithe of the examples of people who exhibit in public and at social gatherings their ills and ailments, accompanied with dreary complainings of their bodily inflictions. It implies no indifference or lack of sympathy for physical pain and hardships to say that its victims have no right to mar the enjoyment of others by the unnecessary display of their infirmities or present sufferings. If a man will make a travelling show of his disorders, he should be obliged to carry a hand organ to give variety to his stupid entertainment. Were these fellows all compelled to furnish this accompaniment, what a musical bedlam our streets would become! Of course, there is no law against complaining and repining—it may not be immoral—but it is a very poor method of making those around us happy, which is a duty that none but selfish natures can forget. A man who goes through life with a smiling face and cheerful temper, despite the grievances common to us all, is a public benefactor in his way, as much as one who founds a library or establishes an asylum.

Misanthropy is a sublime egotism that mistakes its own distemper for a disease of the universe. With all the mishaps to which our life is subject, a glance over a wide range of human experience proves that God helps those who help themselves, and whatever be the tenor of our fortune, levity is more seemly than moodiness, and under any circumstances there is more virtue in being a clown than a cynic. But in adversity, a subdued cheerfulness and quiet humor are, next to Christian fortitude, the golden mean of feeling that makes the loss of worldly things rest lightly on the heart, and spreads out before the hopeful eye the vision of better days!