CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
SOCIABLE AND UNSOCIABLE.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
OUR PET RAT.
THE HIGHLAND KEEPER.
BALLOON-TRAVELLING.
LIGHTNING-CONDUCTORS.
A SPRING BOUQUET.
No. 738.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1878.
SOCIABLE AND UNSOCIABLE.
The pleasures of social intercourse are amongstthe best and truest enjoyments in which wecan participate—the desire for the friendship ofothers is more or less inherent in human nature.There are nevertheless thousands upon thousandswho are surrounded by every opportunity forrealising these pleasures, and who yet fail to benefitby their influence, either for temporary andhealthy pastime, or for permanent good. Mostpeople have doubtless many amongst their circleof acquaintance who are easily distinguished fromothers by the term ‘unsociable.’ It would, however,be both unfair and incorrect to estimate that alarge proportion of a given number of people havea decided objection to and shun all society. Thehabitually unsociable people are frequently thosewho would readily confess to a liking for society,but who do not enter into it on account of thevarious and numerous obstacles which, they willtell you, are in the way. It is not so much onaccount of an innate and acknowledged indispositionfor social intercourse that the saying,‘Some folk are as unsociable as milestones,’ is proverbiallycorrect, as that many barriers have beenerected by the suspicious imaginations of thoseconcerned. People are often heard to complainof the unsociability of others; but it is not unseldomthat the very people who adopt this standpointare those who, at the least approach fromothers, retire almost entirely within their insignificantindividuality, and assume a reserve ofmanner and constrained mode of conversation,that of itself forbids any attempt to cultivatetheir acquaintance. Something like a hedgehogwhich, should you happen to catch sight of it,instead of making friends, rolls itself up intoa ball, and shews off its bristles to the bestadvantage.
Perhaps nothing constitutes so great a hindranceto what may be termed natural and unadulteratedsocial intercourse as the unnatural appearancewhich many folk strive to put upon themselvesand their belongings for the benefit of the objectsof their acquaintance. For the entertainment oftheir visitors, some good folk will change, as faras they possibly can, the entire face and featuresof their houses and themselves—in short, for thetime being they seem to be somebody else—theygo to great pains to make things unreal. On suchshow-occasions a profusion of apologies is someti