Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art by Various

THE pleasures of social intercourse are amongst the best and truest enjoyments in which we can participate—the desire for the friendship of others is more or less inherent in human nature. There are nevertheless thousands upon thousands who are surrounded by every opportunity for realising these pleasures, and who yet fail to benefit by their influence, either for temporary and healthy pastime, or for permanent good. Most people have doubtless many amongst their circle of acquaintance who are easily distinguished from others by the term ‘unsociable.’ It would, however, be both unfair and incorrect to estimate that a large proportion of a given number of people have a decided objection to and shun all society. The habitually unsociable people are frequently those who would readily confess to a liking for society, but who do not enter into it on account of the various and numerous obstacles which, they will tell you, are in the way. It is not so much on account of an innate and acknowledged indisposition for social intercourse that the saying, ‘Some folk are as unsociable as milestones,’ is proverbially correct, as that many barriers have been erected by the suspicious imaginations of those concerned. People are often heard to complain of the unsociability of others; but it is not unseldom that the very people who adopt this standpoint are those who, at the least approach from others, retire almost entirely within their insignificant individuality, and assume a reserve of manner and constrained mode of conversation, that of itself forbids any attempt to cultivate their acquaintance. Something like a hedgehog which, should you happen to catch sight of it, instead of making friends, rolls itself up into a ball, and shews off its bristles to the best advantage.