Avoid Chronic Grumblers, Discontented and Gloomy

1912

AVOID SPREADERS OF GLOOM

Chronic Grumblers and Avowed Discontented Persons Are Never the Best of Companions in Life

The chronic grumbler is not a good companion nor in any way an admirable person. We fly from her as from a contagious disease. Nothing so certainly affects one's spirits as being in the constant company of a person who has a grievance.

The cherishing of discontent with our circumstances, business, dress, or any other thing in life soon robs us of beauty and marks the countenance with the lines of worry and ill temper that tell their own unhappy story.

Why anybody who is young should indulge in grumbling as a pastime is one of the puzzles that never is solved, yet such people there are, and we meet them to our sorrow almost every day.

If they happen to be passengers on a railway train they pile their bags and bundles on an extra seat for which they have not paid, are conveniently blind to the weariness of other passengers who are standing, and assume the aspect of martyrs when the conductor courteously but peremptorily informs them that they must make room.

They object to having the windows open, although the air may be loaded with impurities from the congestion of the crowd; they scold and fret at the throng or the conductor and rail at providence in general because everything in life is not arranged with a view to their comfort.

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, December 20, 1912, page 3.