How to be Miserable

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 16, 1868

How to be Miserable.

Sit by the window and look over the way to your neighbor's excellent mansion, which he has recently built and paid for, and fitted out.

“Oh, that I were a rich man!”

Get angry with your neighbor, and think you have not a friend in the world. Shed a tear or two, and take a walk in the burial ground, continually saying to yourself—

“When shall I be buried here?”

Sign a note for a friend, and never forget your kindness, and every hour in the day whisper to yourself—“I wonder if he'll ever pay that note?”

Think everybody means to cheat you. Closely examine every bill you take, and doubt its being genuine until you have put your neighbor to a great deal of trouble. Put confidence in nobody, and believe every man you trade with to be a rogue.

Never accommodate if you can possibly help it.

Never visit the sick or afflicted, and never give a farthing to assist the poor.

Buy as cheap as you can, and screw down to the lowest mill. Grind the faces and hearts of the unfortunate.

Brood over your misfortunes, your lack of talents, and believe that at no distant day you will come to want. Let the work-house be ever in your mind, with all the horrors of distress and poverty.

Follow these receipts strictly, and you will be miserable to your heart's content—if we may so speak—sick at heart and at variance with the world. Nothing will cheer or encourage you—nothing will throw a gleam of sunshine or a ray of warmth into your heart.