I could persevere too, I could
stick to work, I had taken a good degree. Then an accidental fall off a
chair, on which I was standing to get a book, laid me on my back for a
time. I fretted over it at first, but when I got about again, I found
that I was a man maimed for life. I don't know what the injury
was--some obscure lesion of the spinal marrow or brain, I believe--some
flaw about the size of a pin's head--the doctors have never made out.
But every time that I plunged into work, I broke down; for a long time
I thought I should struggle through; but at last I became aware that I
was on the shelf, with other cracked jars, for life--I can't tell you
what I went through, what agonies of despair and rebellion. I thought
that at least literature was left me. I had always been fond of books,
and was a good scholar, as it is called; but I soon became aware that I
had no gift of expression, and moreover that I could not hope to
acquire it, because any concentrated effort threw me into illness. I
was an ambitious fellow, and success was closed to me--I could not even
hope to be useful. I tried several things, but always with the same
result; and at last I fell into absolute despair, and just lived on,
praying daily and even hourly that I might die. But I did not die, and
then at last it dawned upon me, like a lightening sunrise, that THIS
was life for me; this was my problem, these my limitations; that I was
to make the best I could out of a dulled and shattered life; that I was
to learn to be happy, even useful, in spite of it--that just as other
people were given activity, practical energy, success, to learn from
them the right balance, the true proportion of life, and not to be
submerged and absorbed in them, so to me was given a simpler problem
still, to have all the temptations of activity removed--temptations to
which with my zest for experience I might have fallen an easy
victim--and to keep my courage high, my spirit pure and expectant, if I
could, waiting upon God. This little estate fell to me soon afterwards,
and I soon saw what a tender gift it was, because it gave me a home;
every other source of interest and pleasure was removed, because the
simplest visits, the wildest distractions were too much for me--the
jarring of any kind of vehicle upset me. By what slow degrees I
attained happiness I can hardly say. But now, looking back, I see
this--that whereas others have to learn by hard experience, that
detachment,