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Sensitive People.
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from the most penetrating gaze. But more frequently their sensitiveness increases, until it becomes a daily, hourly instrument of torment. It is usually coupled with an imaginative temperament, and more than half the hurts it receives are fancied, or not dealt with intention. Sensitive people are always ready to be wounded, always expecting to be wounded, always attracting casual shots their way, and often draw down unpremeditated smiting by their evident anticipation of the stroke.

Though the possessors of these highly sensitive organizations may excite our tenderest sympathy, though they may win our love, and must move our pity, yet they are not pleasant companions. Their constant distress disturbs the general serenity; their imaginary wrongs destroy all harmony, and the effort to guard them from random arrows prevents all freedom of communion. If a humorous anecdote is related, satirizing peculiarities of character which they chance to consider their own, they are certain the raconteur meant to be personal; if they perceive a knot of friends conversing in a low tone, they are sure the conversation is about them; if they are not treated with distinguishing attention, they fancy themselves slighted; if they receive particular consideration, they imagine that they are pitied and patronized; if an opinion of theirs is combated, they color with mortification; if they are brought forward in any conspicuous manner, they are pale with alarm; in

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