Snodgrass, who is writing a work on "The Discomforts of the Rich," taking
a view of life which he says has been wholly overlooked. He declares that
their annoyances, sufferings, mortifications, envies, jealousies,
disappointments, dissatisfactions (and so on through the dictionary of
disagreeable emotions), are a great deal more than those of the poor, and
that they are more worthy of sympathy. Their troubles are real and
unbearable, because they are largely of the mind. All these are set
forth with so much powerful language and variety of illustration that
King said no one could read the book without tears for the rich of
Newport, and he asked Mr. Snodgrass why he did not organize a society for
their relief. But the latter declared that it was not a matter for
levity. The misery is real. An imaginary case would illustrate his
meaning. Suppose two persons quarrel about a purchase of land, and one
builds a stable on his lot so as to shut out his neighbor's view of the
sea. Would not the one suffer because he could not see the ocean, and
the other by reason of the revengeful state of his mind? He went on to
argue that the owner of a splendid villa might have, for reasons he gave,
less content in it than another person in a tiny cottage so small that it
had no spare room for his mother-in-law even, and that in fact his
satisfaction in his own place might be spoiled by the more showy place of
his neighbor.
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