encroachments?  On your own side, too, has it not rather tended to irritate you against people whom you formerly liked, because you are suffering from the daily and hourly pressure of the sacrifices you have imprudently made for them?  Believe me, there can be no peace or happiness in domestic life without a bien entendu self-love, which will be found by intelligent experience to be a preservative from selfishness, instead of a manifestation of it.

From all that I have already said, you will, I hope, infer that I am not likely to recommend any extravagant social sacrifices, or to bring you in guilty of selfishness for actions not really deserving of the name.  Indeed, I have said so much on the other side, that I may now have some difficulty in proving that, while defending self-love, I have not been defending you.  We must therefore go back to my former definition of selfishness—­namely, a seeking for ourselves that which is not our real good, to the neglect of all consideration for that which is the real good of others.  This is viewing the subject an grand,—­a very general definition, indeed, but not a vague one, for all the following illustrations from the minor details of life may clearly be referred under this head.

These are the sort of illustrations I always prefer—­they come home so much more readily to the heart and mind.  Will not some of the following come home to you?  The indulgence of your indolence by sending a tired person on a message when you are very well able to go yourself—­sending a servant away from her work which she has to finish within a certain time—­keeping your maid standing to bestow much more than needful decoration on your dress, hair, &c., at a time when she is weak or tired—­driving one way for your own mere amusement, when it is a real inconvenience to your companion not to go another—­expressing or acting on a disinclination to accompany your friend or sister when she cannot go alone—­refusing to give up a book that is always within your reach to another who may have only this opportunity of reading it—­walking too far or too fast, to the serious annoyance of a tired or delicate companion—­refusing, or only consenting with ill-humour, to write a letter, or to do a piece of work, or to entertain a visitor, or to pay a visit, when the person whose more immediate business it is, has, from want of time, and not from idleness or laziness, no power to do what she requests of you—­dwelling on all the details of a painful subject, for the mere purpose of giving vent to and thus relieving your own feelings, though it may be by the harrowing up of those of others who are less able to bear it.  All these are indeed trifles—­but

    Trifles make the sum of human things,[45]

and are sure to occur every day, and to form the character into such habits as will fit or unfit it for great proofs of unselfishness, should such be ever called for.  Besides, it is on trifles such as these that the smoothness of “the current of domestic joy” depends.  It is a smoothness that is easily disturbed:  do not let your hand be the one to do it.