Reflect as
to how fully you availed yourself of the experience of _your_
grandparents when you were young, and then make your demands
accordingly. Tell the young the story of your life as a story, and they
will listen and mayhap profit; give it as advice, and you shall see them
keep as far off as circumstances will admit. It is my fixed belief that
until the people in the world have learned how to hold their tongues, it
will be entirely useless to read Dr. Cumming; believe in the Great
Tribulation as much as you please, for it is about us all day long, but
don't look out for the Millennium, which I think will consist entirely
in people's minding their own business.
In the inability or unwillingness of people to let other people alone,
may be summed up all the aggravation of living. The bane of my life has
been never being let alone. People seem to think they have come into the
world with a special mission to give me advice, and from my babyhood up,
I have never been allowed to carry out the best-arranged plan of
operation, without interference. As each man and woman is the
representative of a certain class, I conclude others have had the same
experience with myself; and there is a gloomy satisfaction in reflecting
that there are many who have been made as essentially uncomfortable as
I. The result has been, I have come to the unalterable determination
never, under any circumstances, to either advise anybody or receive it
myself where it can be avoided.
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