There are some people always looking out for slights. They can not pay a visit, they can not receive a friend, they can not carry on the daily intercourse of the family, without suspecting some offense is designed. Their amour propre, like a porcupine, is ever ready to erect its quills. If they meet an acquaintance in the street, who happens to be pre-occupied with business, they attribute his abstraction to some motive personal to themselves, and take umbrage accordingly. They lay on others the fault of their own irritability. A fit of indigestion makes them see impertinence in everybody they come in contact with. Innocent persons, who never dreamed of giving offense, are astonished to find some unfortunate word, or some momentary taciturnity, has been mistaken for an insult. To say the least, the habit is unfortunate. It is far wiser to take the more charitable view of our fellow beings, and not suppose a slight intended, unless the neglect is open and direct. After all, too, life takes its hue, in a great degree, from the color of our own minds. If we are frank and generous, the world treats us kindly. If on the contrary, we are suspicious, men learn to be cold and cautious to us. Let a person get a reputation for being touchy, and everybody is under more or less restraint in his or her presence; and in this way the chances of an imaginary offense are vastly increased. Your people who fire up easily miss a deal of happiness. Their jaundiced tempers destroy their own comfort, as well as that of their friends. They have forever some fancied slight to brood over. The sunny, serene contentment of less selfish dispositions never visits them. Have you this suspicious tendency in your characters? Lose no time in eradicating it. Whether it comes from excessive sensitiveness or from a worse source, it will prove the bane of your life and the annoyance of your friends. You will always be in "hot water," to quote the old adage, while you retain such a weakness. Neither wife nor husband, parent nor child, friend nor acquaintance, can preserve for you an undiminished affection, if you continue suspicious, if you imagine slights that were never intended. It is both more prudent and Christian to err, if you err at all, by not seeing neglect that is intended. Often a bitter quarrel, a life long alienation, may be averted by overlooking conduct that is the result of temporary irritation. How worse than foolish, then, to see a slight where none was meant!—Sel.