p. 379 | GRUMBLING

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1880

GRUMBLING.

GRUMBLING is rarely done by any one who has a fair show of reason for grumbling. Those who are worst off are, as a rule, least likely to complain of their condition. Whenever you hear a person tell of the hard lot he has, you can feel pretty sure that he is better off than most of his fellows—so well off that he has time to grumble. Here, for example, while the mercury is in the nineties, a set of men just across the street from us, in a close upper room, with its low ceiling and its poor draught, are at work on metal soldering with blow-pipes over blazing gas-jets, with never a thought of growling about the weather. They laugh merrily, and take things easy. In the restaurant on the lower floor of a neighboring building a stout gentleman of leisure sits in a wicker chair, with his shirt collar unbuttoned, and swings heavily a large palm-leaf fan, while he sips an iced lemonade, and groans out after each sip that this terrible weather is intolerable, and will be the death of him if it lasts two days more. And so it is all the way along in life. The more comfort, the more grumbling. That is the way of the world.