Norwich bulletin., 1909-03-13
SUNDAY MORNING TALK
HUMAN rYPEs-rHE pEssIMlsr.


 Only last week stood with one for a half hour on the front platform of a car. The sky was overcast and his face more SO. AS from time to time he turned the juice" on and off l could see that it was a tired, dispirited man who was guiding that car. Ask ing him if he had attended any of the special religious meetings in the city lately, learned that all his spare time had been given to caring for a sick friend who had died the night before. And now" continued the man at the brake, things look pretty dark" tried to rally him by reminding him that he had st.ll his own life to live and that he could naturally expect at least twenty years of happy life. T don't care whether it Is twenty or two" he gloomily replied. 'In fact, l shouldn't care if 1t ended today"
 There you have your pessimist and this particular one has ample com pany today, not only in men of his own class, but in men who stand high in philosophy. But somehow I have less sympathy with the philosophical pessimist. the man who reasons it all cut theoretically that this Is the worst possible world. than I have with the ressinist who thinks he is forced into p0SSlInlSDl Dy ln6 1dTu COlu4LlOub Ol his own life. If were going to spend my days and nights constructing q system of philosophy. I should try to build a cheery, hopeful one. But for the man who is chronically gloomy be- cause he has to stand at the brake all day long. or to do even harder and more monotonous things. who has to shovel coal into the fires that drive the throbbing engines of an ocean Aner, the woman who has to leave her own children with a neighbor while she earns their daily bread, the child who goes to some nlonotonous and paralyz- ing employment every morning, when he ought to be on his way to school, I have a heart full of sympathy. Were in their places might be pessi- mist, to-.
 Certainly we who are more favored in our surroundings, who have more Congenial and varied. if net less ardu ous tasks. ought to be considerate of the pessimist. And we who are con stitutionally equipped with a sunny temperament should be patient with the man whose temperament is just the opposite of ours. Poor fellow. he may have inherited 1t from some gloomy ancestor several generations back. And all of should recognize the service which the pessimist renders by recalling us now and then to the hard, sober, painful facts of life.
 But let the pessinist also sec things straight and see life as a whole. A cute distinction some witty fellow has made between optimist and pessimist. The former, he says, sees the dough- nut, the latter the hole. Is 1t too much to ask of any motorman, for example, that he be fair and broad enough to look occasionally at the doughnut, to hear the laughter of the happy chil- dren whom he carries day by day, to recognize the beauty and order of the universe all about him and the in- disputable fact <hat, more people are happier more often than they are sad. Aye. let him. as he probably can. re- call moments of supreme happiness in his own experience. Let him be can did enough to own that these are the real things in human life; to admit with Archbishop French:
 That doubt and trouble, fear and pain, And anguish all are shadows vain;
 That death itself shall not remain.
 Another bright characterization of the pessimist Is this: He Is the man who. when he sees the tide go out, thinks it will never come back" Are you so impatient. my pessimistic friend, that you cannot wait for the fr4rT of fba ffdaS TIIE pARSON