estate to
pay the yelling vulgarians of the betting-ring. They cheered him when he
all but beggared himself; they hissed him when he failed once to pay.
With lost health, lost patrimony, lost hopes, lost self-respect, he sank
amid the rough billows of life's sea, and only one human creature was
there to aid him when the great last wave swept over him. Lost
days--lost days! Youths who are going to ruin now amid the plaudits of
those who live upon them might surely take warning: but they do not, and
their bones will soon bleach on the mound whereon those of all other
wasters of days have been thrown. When I think of the lost days and the
lost lives of which I have cognizance, then it seems as though I were
gazing on some vast charnel-house, some ghoul-haunted place of skulls.
Memories of those who trifled with life come to me, and their very faces
flash past with looks of tragic significance. By their own fault they
were ruined; they were shut out of the garden of their gifts; their city
of hope was ploughed and salted. The past cannot be retrieved, let
canting optimists talk as they choose; what has been has been, and the
effects will last and spread until the earth shall pass away. Our acts
our angels are, or good or ill; our fatal shadows that walk by us still.
The thing done lasts for eternity; the lightest act of man or woman has
incalculably vast results. So it is madness to say that the lost days
can be retrieved. They cannot! But by timely wisdom we may save the days
and make them beneficent and fruitful in the future. Watch those wild
lads who are sowing in wine what they reap in headache and degradation.
Night after night they laugh with senseless glee, night after night
inanities which pass for wit are poured forth; and daily the nerve and
strength of each carouser grow weaker. Can you retrieve those nights?
Never! But you may take the most shattered of the crew and assure him
that all is not irretrievably lost; his weakened nerve may be steadied,
his deranged gastric functions may gradually grow more healthy, his
distorted views of life may pass away. So far, so good; but never try to
persuade any one that the past may be repaired, for that delusion is the
very source and spring of the foul stream of lost days. Once impress
upon any teachable creature the stern fact that a lost day is lost for
ever, once make that belief part of his being, and then he will strive
to cheat death. Perhaps it may be thought that I