The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1880-01-22
Aptitude for Injury.

A limited number of people possess |
what may be called an aptitude for in
jury. They not only accept it at every
turn and receive it at every pore, but
actually seem to hunt il up and lie IN
wait for it. Nothing falls that does not
hit them; nothing breaks that does not
hurt them; nothing happens any way
that they do not reap a golden harvest
of wrong from it. These people are
miserable, as matter of course-that
goes without saying but they would be
utterly and hopelessly miserable if they
could not at any moment scrape the
substance of an injury together to solace
some heavy hour destitute of other eX-
element. If somebody has not back
bitten them, somebody is just about to
do so; if somebody has not cheated
them, somebody would like to cheat
them; and if the number of the Him
tentiOned living is sufficient to feed the
appetite for boosted suffering, there is
always an aneestry-fortunate thing! =
to fall back upon, whose wrong dOings
have been innumerable, and the results
of whose wrong-doings are incaleulable.
OF course these injured beings never
do any thing to provoke injury. They
never insinuate or whine; they never
openly or underhandedly charge the in
nOcent with outrage; they never weary
the patient with complaining, or repay
good intentions with unceasing re-
proach, ora nag'' theworm till it turns /;
they never abuse any body's friends;
they never criticise any bOdy's person;
they never make themselves so disa-
greeable that people avoid them and
| escape them in self-defense; and they
are never by any means 50 insolent over
imaginary injuriesrthat it becomes i'm
possible for those haYing any seif-re-
spect at all to explain the circumstances
and do away with the error; they never
/ in effect do any thing but conduct them
selves like suffering saints waiting for
their translation.
Why, then, it may be asked, should
any body want to injure themP But
| there is the mystery, the problem they are
always trying to solve, and whose solu-
ton, though they reach it twenty ways,
will never be other than to the satisfac-
ton of their self-esteem; and they inva-
riably fall back on a comforting belief
that they receive the injury because OF
their superior virtues, graces, beauties,
or position.
These people, it may be seen, are
possessed of a singular sort of folly, if II
may be so mildly denominated, and il
dering on the nature of insanity. There
is wisdom ordinarily in doing the utmost
to have the world believe you to be vel
thought of, held in esteem, and treated
with consideration. If people in genera
observe that you have the countenanct
of others, you are tOlerably sure to stand
well in their favor; but if others are
found to regard you as worth nothing
but injury, the natural inference may b'
that nothing but injury is what you de
serve. 1t is only the beggars that eX
hibit their sores and those that haY,
any common sense with their vanity
and wish the world to hold whatever il
said or thought of them of consequence
instead of parading the i'll cOnceit tina
others have of them, will take every OPP
pOrtunity of making manifest precisel,
the contrary, and swelling their self-im
portance by the means of it. But n,
such idea enters the minds of these un
fortunates; their vanity feeds on thei
martyrdom.
1t is not always, either, that they ar
entirely satisfied with the ills they have
they would like to fancy themselves re
ceiving some positive and tremendOu
wrong. If somebody would slap thei
faces, they would have real exultatiOn
| IL bnSlI WIVES WOulu run away II GLCA
husbands would try to take their lives
bliss-bliss, that is, of their melanchol
kind could hardly go farther wit
them.
: In what the enjoyment of this sort o
| emotion consists it is not seasy to say
nor even to imagine. If it were in tn
exhibition to spectators of the patienc
: and meekness ard fortitude with whic
2 the wrongs, real or imaginary, ar
5 borne, one might gather some comprt
hension of it, in view of the self-cOn
placency gratified by such exhibition
But as the spectators see nothing of tn
sort, but, on the other hand, see ever
opposite method used-not fortitudC
but whines, not meeknes, but defiance
= and no other patience than that STINT
lated sort which is a mOckery of thos
whom it accuses-it remains sOmethin
> as yet unexplained why there are peopl
= in the world who love TO be injured, an
who are happier the more injured the
d are-people who know that nobody POI
sesses such power of creating intens
J discomfort in the hearts and souls
those that mean to do right as then
: selves, such power to annoy, to humble
i to worry, to sadden, to distress in ever
: way, and who do not hesitate to exercis
the power to its fullest extent, till one
: ready to declare that there is no sue
: imp of torment in any home as one {
i these saints and martyrs. = Harper
= BGzar.