Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1876-01-20
Consideration Of Others.

THE Saturday Reciel0, in an article on
this subject, says: Most people can be
quickened into consideration by selfin-
terest. To be treated with consideration
is the privilege of wealth and greatness,
while it is the lot Of some never to have
their existence recognized by regard for
their feelings, preferences, dislikes. It
does not do to complain, as some do, of
people riding rough-shod over their SEN
sibilities; but the thing sometimes happens
through mere preoccupation with the
principal figure in a group. The consid-
crate temper ever bearssin mind not only
the prominent members of a company
but the supernumeraries Nobody is in
significant enough to- be left out of the
Reckoning. This deliberation and sus-
pended action of thought and tongue is,
it must be granted, much easier to some
persons than to others The more pro-
nOunced the character the more is con-
sideratiOn of this subtle kind difficult,
and thing requiring constant effort
it is a mild virtue, meritOrious in proper
ton to the wit and fine impulse it has to
contend with. By reformers and ascetics
1t is discarded along with the other minor
domestic virtues. 1t is their business to
disturb every comfortable state of things.
Every founder of rule enforces his rule
upon ali constitutions and tempers alike
consideration would be weakness. But
also it is the too common fault of family
life to fail in considerateness. 1t is sup
posed that natural affection dispenses with
it, as being qualitys SO innate that moth
ing can weaken it. And no doubt it does
pull through some very rough encoun4-
ers; but nothing can in the long run
stand disregard or forgetfulness of the
idiOsynCracies which constitute self. The
families that hold on to one another through
life have always considered one another in
small things as we'll as great.
Want of tact is so like inconsiderate
ness in its effects that it may be regarded
as branch OF our subject. We cannot,
for example, say whether it is want of tact
or want of consideration that sometimes
stumbles in the way of the most critical
occasions Of life-thosc touch and go
states of feeling between man and woman
which must be caught at the crisis; when,
if proposal is interrupted, declaration
strangled in the opening sentence, no after
opportunity is of any avail. To judge
from novels and from some actual expert
ences blunderers of our present type have
a great deal TO answer for. MANY a
blighted life owes its sorrows to an inOp-
perfume intrusion, or blindness to the OBJ
vious duty of keeping out of the way, or
to Joke mistimed or some other obtuse
ness of the moral sense. There is this
difference to be observed between want of
consideration and want of tact: that the
one can be cured by care, watchfulness.
regard for personal interrstor an enlarged
benevolence, but the other never. Want
of tact is an incurable infrmity; nothing
can mend it, nothing can prevent its up
seasonable exhibition. 1t is a sense want
ing, whereas inconsiderateness is only a
sense dulled from want of practice. In
the one case 1t is mere want of thought
in the other it is innocent persistency in
wrong saying and doing. The topics
which want Of tact will think suitable,
the memories it will rake up, the services
it will obtrude, the times and seasons it