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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 215, 11 September 1871, Page 4

Advantages of Being- Cantankerous. — How carefully you consider the tempers, the crotchets, the idiotic notions and prejudices, of the cantankerous fool from whom you cannot escape ! As for a human being of good sense and good temper, nobody, in the common transaction fo life, minds him. Nobody smoothes him down*; pets him ; considers him ; tries to keep him right. You take for granted he will do right and act sensibly, without any management. If you are driving a docile and well-tempered horse, who is safe to go straight, gou give the animal little thought or attention. But if you have to drive a refractory pig, how much more care and thought you put into that act of driving ! Your wits must be 'alive; you humor the abominable brute; you try to keep it in a good temper; and when you ■■•would fain let fly at its head, or apply to it abusive epithets, you suppress the injurious phrase, and you hold back the ready hand. So with many a human being* whom you are trying to get to act rationally; who hangs back on all kinds of idiotic pretexts, and starts all conceivable preposterous objections to the course which common-sense frequently changing his ground,/ and defying ! you to pin him to any reason he states, as is the way "with such creatures; ' When yourtongiie is ! ready to exclaim, " 0 you . disgusting and wrong-headed fool, will you lijOJt'tr^ jto behave rationally ? " you withhold the ready and appropriate worcjs :.ypu [know that, would Wow W whole thing iip/and you

probably say, in friendly tones, " My good fellow, there is a great deal in your objection?,,. nndh.we.have all the greatest desire [to do \yhat you may wish ; but then there are A and B, difficult men to deal with ; and in this matter you must just let us do what has been arranged. Pray do this, and we shall all be greatly obliged to you." Perhaps jjwu even degrade yourself by suggesting to tha cantankerons fool reasons which you;know to be of no weight, but which your knowledge of the fool makes you think may have weight with his idiotic mind. By little bits of defference and attention, rendered with a smooth brow, beneath which lurks the burning desire to take him by the neck and shake him, you seek to keep straight the inevitable cantankerous fool. Yes, my reader, if you want to be deferred to, humored, made much of; if you want to have everybody about you trying to persuade you to act as a sensible man would act without any persuasion ; and everybody quite pleased and happy if you have been got, after much difficulty, into the right track ; see that you set yourself before that portion of mankind that cannot get rid of you in the important and influential character of an ill-tempered and wrong-headed fool. — Fraser.