New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1875-03-19
THLN.SKINNED PEOPLE.

THIN-SKfNNED PEOPLE,
A prince of one of the royal houses OF
Europe, who has been dangerously ill several
times during last year, was born. 1t Is stafed
by his physicians, without one of the two
skins which usually cover the body, and has
literally been fighting death from his cradle.
We all of us love a lord enough to take
keen interest in this curious case OF disease
upon the steps of throne; but our second
thought no doubt, was as to how many pe0-
pie we had known who contrlved to live
with, metaphorically speaking, no skins at all
There certainly is something in an ordinary
mans character which takes the place of skin
in the body-some insensible way of getting
rid of unwhoesome fancics and humors with
ont forcing them on other peoples sight or
hearing. Our neighbor, Charley Noyes, is fur
nishcd with a double provision of this In
visible cuticle. He Is past fifty, broker with
a wife and half dozen children; be has had
his ups and downs with the rest of us; the
panic left him without dollar; every w inter
he is shcved awhile with lnfammatOry rheu-
matism; but his checks are fat and rosy, and
his eyes bright under the gray hair; the joke
is rs ready as when he was boy; he meets
an old friend at every corner or the street,
and goes off from him laughing; he is
"Charloyr 10 everybody, and will be until he
dies as tor his worries and griefs, he neither
fights nor philosophers nor prays them away;
they evaporate, disappear; the million pores
of this gay, healthy temperament OF bis carry
them oif. 1t defends him from mental bruises,
too, precisely as the skin of his body protects
his nerves. You might meet NOycs when you
-, how ST
had a bout with your wife's relations, and
there would be 90 danger that he would take
Offensc at your cantankcrous speeches, Or
imagine that your sarcasm and cynical sncers
were meant for him. The biS-natured. hearty
fellow concerns himself very little about
Charley Noyes one way or the other. and GER
tainly has something else to do than to look
out for pn-prcks aimed at him.
But for one NOycs in any neiShborhood
there are dozen bilious, lean men and
women bewailing their fate before high heaven
day and night on account of some especial
misery or an antipathy existing between them
selves and Providence. According to their
account, they are wretchcs "whom unmerci-
"ful Disaster follows fast and follows faster"
without any act or part of theirs in the mat
n.
whole tribe take an agOnish joy III his woes.
The real ailmcnt with all of them is the lack
of a skin. The griers and bothors which come
to all Of us and disappear in the wholesome
outside air stay with them; their mental
glands don't work them Oft; they stay and
canker. A man of this sort will tell you,
with bitterness of soul, Of thrashing given
HIM when he was a boy. A woman usually
carries the remembrance of her first love
(some mawl1ish collegian, probably through
all her married life, and whimpers secretly
about her wasted powers and inexorable Des-
tiny. Having thus an accumulated stock OF
misery on hand, moro than any of their
neishbors, this Gummidge tribe explain it by
some spite which Fate has against them per-
sonaly. They open an account, so to speak,
with God, and set their Maker down as largely
in their debt. Literature has been the
debtor of these people for one or
two systems of philosophy, a large lot
of skeptical essays, lachrymose novels
by the score, and poetry by the ton. Pope,
Byron, the whole batch of later French poets,
were like 80 many plucked birds-every nerve
was barred to the lghtest wind. They went
about shivering perpetually with spiritual
goose-hesh. Even great-hearted Thackeray
would have given Dobbin and Amelia heartier
flesh and blood if his own mental skin had
been in better working order. In everyday
life hin-skinned people are as difficult to deal
with as soft-shell crabs. You cannot joke
with them without touching vital part; the
nearer and dearer you are to them the reader
are they to take Oifcnse, or to be "hurt," for
they declare they never were angry in their
lives. When you part from them you know
that they will brood over every chance word
to torture out of it some injury to their feel
ings. They keep watch and ward over these
feelings" put chip on them, so to speak,
and wait for somebody to knock it off. They
delight in letters, or explanations trimming
over with tears, or rapturOus reconcilations
They ponder necessarily over their sensibility,
which is nothing but aggressive selfshness.
When half-dOzen or so of these sknless
people are joined in one family, and that
family has more taste and culture than money,
they constitute according to themselves an
Arab community against which the whole
world is at enmity. Good common place
people who never look at books or bric-a- brac
are the objects of their supreme disgust and
satire; and people who do care for books and
bric-a-brac and are able to buy them, they
hate with undying hatred as having person
ally wronged them. In q word. the man who
possesses ono of these willing martyrs as
friend, wife, or worst of all-pOor relation,
gains heaven through great tribulatlOn.