Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1886-11-08
SMALL SELFISHNE ESS.
Which Diminish tn
Happiness of a Family.
From Harper's Bazar.l

From Harper's Bazar.l
One does not particularly care to have the
first reading of the morning paper perhaps,
but when one never gets it until another
person, who has no more need or hurry than
ones self, has not only read it, but studied
it and committed the advertisements to
memory, one possibly through habit expects
nothing else, but just possibly feels a
slight indignation at the way things are taken
for granted and ones self ignored. In the
same manner one does not perhaps expect
the most comfortable chair in the room as
ones own set property; but when another
individual. and that always the same one,
takes it as if it was an heirloom, one is ex-
ceedingly unsel6sh one self not to feel like
making that seat something less comfortable
for its sitter, although one might be re-
strained by the knowledge that in such re-
sort the sitter would take the next most
comfortable chair, leaving others to take re-
fuge where they might and be no better off
than in the beginning.
So, moreover. one sees no especial oeca-
sion for any one individual in the family to
monopolize, whenever evening comes, the
one place that has the most light for either
book or work, or play, regardless W ho sits in
the dim corner, who has shadow thrown
where the strength of the blaze sh )uld fall.
ftI really cannot see anywhere else, says the
monopolizer, TRANQUILITY, as If in full expla-
nation, and if the others eyes were of a
different lens altogether, innocent of the
| fact that no one else can see either, and that
it may not be positively important that the
monopolizer should see at all, since such i'm
portance depends very much on what you
see and how you look at it.
A selfshness as bad as any of the other
forms occurs among those members of a
household, where there is insufficient help,
who do not lift their fingers to assist IN the
lighter work that in such instances falls on
the family itself, and who see others eking
out the work and filling the gaps with dust
ers and dish cloths and brooms without tax
ing part-people who certainly are not to be
looked at in the light of promoter. of that
comfortable feeling which springs from the
sense of equal rights and liberties to all.
Why one daughter sits with her novel while
| another scours the paint is a question that
| may we'll perplex the observer, who fails to
see that it is because one will and the other
| won't, although the one who will cannot, in
spite of herself, hinder feeling of wrong
done to herself, and some sensation of jeal-
ousy occasioned by the appearance of favor
| itism, which does not help to make family
| jars impossible.
We have known of mothers who carried
| the OPPOSITE idea so far that, able to keep no
servants, it CHANGED, they refused to let
the daughters wait upon the sons, seeing no
reason why the sons should not make the
beds they 81 opt in, and if they wanted to
wear clothes requiring hard ironing, such as
| linen and duck and nankeen, should not do
the ironing with their strong hands and mus
cles But those mothers were exceptions in
a world of over INDUCED sons, yet we doubt
not that they made matters easy for their fu-
ture daughters-in-law, who without wishing
their husbands to do such labor, or to effem
inize themselves in any similar way, yet
reaped the benefit of those husbands having
been early taught to consider the rights of
wives and daughters and sisters.
But other selhshnesses as irritating as the
grasping of the best seat and best light and
best novel and first chance at book or news
paper can be met with at every turn in many
families; the selfshness, let us say, that,
having views any questions conflicting
with the views of another, will give voice to
those views in season and out of season. and
obtrude them even to the injury of the feel
ings of Others and if not early and late in
sisting upon them, yet never failing to read
the fragment from book or journal nnpleas
antly supporting them, and indulging in the
audible sniff or sneer or outspoken innuendo,
if such thing there be, on every occasion
where the indulgence is possible, a selfish
ness that shows a consciousness of the value
of no ones views but ones own, and treats
| the individuality of all others with contempt
A similar selfishness is that which disre
CARDS engagements, which considers the
promise to be at home on certain day or {
| fixed hour as of no weight beside the incon