Alessandra. Methinks thou hast a singular way of showing

Thy happiness!—what ails thee, cousin of mine?

Why didst thou sigh so deeply?

"Castiglione. Did I sigh?

I was not conscious of it. It is a fashion,
A silly-a most silly fashion I have

When I am very happy. Did I sigh?”

POE.

HERE is a hill opposite to my window, up which,

TH during all the long and weary day, horses are

drawing heavy loads. The majority of them crawl patiently along, with their heads down and with reeking flanks and shoulders, pausing occasionally as the

water-bars brace the wheels, and impatient only with the flies that vex their ears, and the insufficiency of their short and stumpy tails to protect their quivering sides. Some of these animals are not so patient, but are nervous and spasmodic and unhappy. I have noticed one among them particularly, that has a very bad time every morning with his first load. He is what the teamsters call "balky," though evidently an excellent horse. Much coaxing and not a little whipping seem necessary to get him started; and then he plunges into his work as if he were determined to tear his harness and his load all in pieces. I notice that there are certain unusual fixtures about his collar, and learn that the poor animal has a galled shoulder, so raw and inflamed that all his first efforts in the morning are attended by pain, and that he only works well after the flesh has become benumbed by pressure. I ask his driver why he does not turn the creature into the pasture, and let the ulcer heal, and am told that he has been treated thus repeatedly, but that it always returns when labor is resumed. There is a livery stable that I visit frequently; and while I wait to be served I notice what the grooms are doing. I see that when the currycomb or brush touches a certain spot upon the horse's skin there is a cringe, and usually a kick and a squeal, -possibly a harmless nip at the groom's shoulder. I learn, too, that there is a certain place upon the back

of every horse that the grooms are not permitted to bathe with cold water.

These sore spots and tender spots and sensitive spots on horses have very faithful counterparts in the minds and characters of men. I do not know that I ever met a man who had not on him, somewhere, a sore spot, or a tender spot, or a sensitive spot-a spot that would either gall under the collar of labor, or bring on hysterics if harshly rubbed, or communicate a damaging shock to the nervous system when suddenly cooled. Very few men arrive at thirty-five years of age without getting galled, and very few entirely recover from the abrasion while they live. The spot never thoroughly heals, and the old collar only needs to be put on, even after the longest period of rest, to develop the ulcer in the same old place. I heard a young clergyman preach recently, and I instantly learned that he had a sore spot under his collar. He. was a young man of fine powers, bold intellect, a strong love of freedom, and a will determined to do honor to his convictions. He had formed his own opinion upon certain points of doctrine, and had insisted upon it in the presence of his elders. The consequence was that he had been bitterly opposed, and was with great difficulty settled over his parish. The screws had been put tightly down upon him, and he had felt, in the very depths of his sensitive soul, that the liberty where

with Christ had made him free had been tampered with. So he could neither pray nor preach without showing that he had a sore spot on him. He did not betray it by refusing to draw at all; but he drew violently, as if he had been hitched to the leg of an obtuse Doctor of Divinity, and intended to give all the other Doctors of Divinity notice to get out of the way. Now that sore spot on that young man's shoulder is sure to color all his efforts from this time henceforth, until he puts on another kind of collar. The same old sting will be in all his preaching--a tinge of personal feeling that the masses of those who hear him preach will not understand, and that he, at last, will become unconscious of. Ministers have more sore places under their harnesses than any class of men I know of.

A minister who has adopted unpopular views, and, in his advocacy of them, has rubbed against the fixed opinions or prejudices of the people to which he is called to preach, is very sure to get sore; and he will either wince with the friction or oppose himself to it with violence. His soreness will always be calling attention to that which caused it, so that if his wound was procured in the advocacy of some infernal doctrine like "infant damnation," why, infant damnation will seem to become a very precious doctrine to him, and he will always be talking about it, and enforcing it. If he has preached against slavery, or intemperance, or

any other public wrong or popular vice, and been fiercely and persistently opposed by any portion of his charge, he will betray the sore under his collar on all occasions, and very possibly become so fractious and violent that his flock will be obliged to turn him out to pasture. A minister who gets sore under the friction of any particular collar seems to feel that it is necessary for him to wear that particular collar all the time; and he fails to remember that the reason why he has so much feeling with this collar, on, is that it has made him sore. Not unfrequently he becomes so sensitive and so nervous that he kicks out of the traces, and runs away with, and smashes up, the vehicle to which he is attached.

No small degree of the sourness and bitterness and violence of the advocates of special reforms comes from wearing too long the collar of the public apathy, or the public contempt. The men are very few, who, with the consciousness of being actuated by a good motive, can work against opposition a long time, without getting sore, and without betraying their soreness, either by stubbornness or violence. Touch them anywhere but upon the galled spot, and they will be as calm as clocks, and as good-natured as kittens; touch them there, and we are sure to get a kick and a squeal, and

nip at the shoulder. Heartless practical jokers understand where "the raw" is, and know exactly what