m
to relieve me at once of horse and rival at the moment when he was
suffering the tortures of a rejection, and I was rushing to take
the hand he coveted; I was so far guilty. But to how great a degree
guiltless, how could I possibly explain to the satisfaction of an angry
man? I had the vision of him leaping on the horse, while I perused his
challenge; saw him fix to the saddle and smile hard, and away to do
me of all services the last he would have performed wittingly. The
situation was exactly of a sort for one of his German phantasy-writers
to image the forest jeering at him as he flew, blind, deaf, and
unreasonable, vehement for one fierce draught of speed. We are all
dogged by the humour of following events when we start on a wind of
passion. I could almost fancy myself an accomplice. I realized the scene
with such intensity in the light running at his heels: it may be quite
true that I laughed in the hearing of his messenger as I folded up the
letter. That was the man's report. I am not commonly one to be forgetful
of due observances.

The prospect of the possible eternal separation from my beloved pricked
my mechanical wits and set them tracing the consequent line by which I
had been brought to this pass as to a natural result. Had not my
father succeeded in inspiring the idea that I was something more than
something? The tendency of young men is to conceive it for themselves
without assistance; a prolonged puff from the breath of another is
nearly sure to make them mad as kings, and not so pardonably.

I see that I might have acted wisely, and did not; but that is a
speculation taken apart from my capabilities. If a man's fate were as
a forbidden fruit, detached from him, and in front of him, he might
hesitate fortunately before plucking it; but, as most of us are aware,
the vital half of it lies in the seed-paths he has traversed. We are
sons of yesterday, not of the morning. The past is our mortal mother,
no dead thing. Our future constantly reflects her to the soul. Nor is it
ever the new man of to-day which grasps his fortune, good or ill. We are
pushed to it by the hundreds of days we have buried, eager ghosts. And
if you have not the habit of taking counsel with them, you are but an
instrument in their hands.

My English tongue admonishes me that I have fallen upon a tone
resembling one who uplifts the finger of piety in a salon of
conversation. A man's review of the course of his life grows for a
mom