CHAPTER IV.
_Why does Mrs.Smith get on My Nerves ?_ IF you want to know the true answer to this question it is "because you are unwilling that Mrs.Smith should be herself." You want her to be just like you, or, if not just like you, you want her to be just as you would best like her.
I have seen a woman so annoyed that she could not eat her supper because another woman ate sugar on baked beans.

When this woman told me later what it was that had taken away her appetite she added: "And isn't it absurd?
Why shouldn't Mrs.Smith eat sugar on baked beans?
It does not hurt me.

I do not have to taste the sugar on the beans; but is it such an odd thing to do.

It seems to me such bad manners that I just get so mad I can't eat!" Now, could there be anything more absurd than that?
To see a woman annoyed; to see her recognize that she was uselessly and foolishly annoyed, and yet to see that she makes not the slightest effort to get over her annoyance.
It is like the woman who discovered that she spoke aloud in church, and was so surprised that she exclaimed: "Why, I spoke out loud in church!" and then, again surprised, she cried: "Why, I keep speaking aloud in church!"-- and it did not occur to her to stop.
My friend would have refused an invitation to supper, I truly believe, if she had known that Mrs.Smith would be there and her hostess would have baked beans.

She was really a slave to Mrs.Smith's way of eating baked beans.
"Well, I do not blame her," I hear some reader say; "it is entirely out of place to eat sugar on baked beans.