and familiar connections. They may annoy us by their folly, or stay too long when they call, or call at inconvenient times; but how sweetly do we smile at all their remarks, how patiently do we bear all their allusions, compared with those of our own family circle. The fact is, they have less power over us, and for this reason, because they do not know us so well. Half the provocations we experience from common conversation, and more than half the point of every bitter taunt, arise out of some intended or imagined allusion to what has been known or supposed of us before. If a parent speaks harshly to us in years of maturity, we think he assumes too much the authority which governed our childhood; if a brother would correct our folly, we are piqued and mortified to think how often he must have seen it; if a sister blames us for any trifling error, we know what her condemnation of our whole conduct must be, if all our faults are blamed in the same proportion. Thus it is that our near connections have a hold upon us, which strangers cannot have ; for, besides the cases in which the offence is merely imagined, there are but too many in which past folly or transgression is made the subject of present reproach. And thus the evil grows, as year after year is added to the catalogue of the past, until our nearest connections have need of the utmost forbearance to avoid touching upon any tender or forbidden point.
Now, it is evident that youth must be comparatively exempt from this real or imaginary source of pain; just in proportion as the past is of less importance to them, and as fewer allusions can be made to the follies or the errors of their former lives. Thus the season of youth has greatly the advantage over that of maturer age, in cultivating that evenness of temper which enables its possessor to pass pleasantly along the stream of life, without unnecessarily ruffling its own course, or that of others.
