heart to oil the wheels and polish up the machine, and does not for a
moment imagine that the hitch is owing to original incompatibility of
parts and purposes, that the whole machine must be pulled to pieces
and made over, and that nothing will be done by standing patiently by,
trying to soothe away the creaking and wheezing and groaning of the
laboring, lumbering thing, by laying on a little drop of sweet-oil with
a pin-feather. As it does not see any of these things that are happening
before its eyes, of course it is shallowly happy. And on the other hand,
he who does see them and is not amiable is grimly and Grendally happy.
He likes to say disagreeable things, and all this dismay and disaster
scatter disagreeable things broadcast along his path, so that all he
has to do is to pick them up and say them. Therefore this world is his
paradise. He would not know what to do with himself in a world where
matters were sorted and folded and laid away ready for you when you
wanted them. He likes to see human affairs mixing themselves up in
irretrievable confusion. If he detects a symptom of straightening, it
shall go hard but he will thrust in his own fingers and snarl a thread
or two. He is delighted to find dogged duty and eager desire butting
each other. All the irresistible forces crashing against all the
immovable bodies give him no shock, only a pleasant titillation. He is
never so happy as when men are taking hold of things by the blade, and
cutting their hands, and losing blood. He tells them of it, but not in
order to relieve so much as to "aggravate" them; and he does aggravate
them, and is satisfied. Oh, but he is an aggravating person!

It is you, you who combine the heart of a seraph with the head of a
cherub, who know what trouble is. You see where the shoe pinches, but
your whole soul relucts from pointing out the tender place. You see why
things go wrong, and how they might be set right; but you have a mortal
dread of being thought meddlesome and impertinent, or cold and cruel,