e fish has come--and gone again! A fisherman must
guard against being soured and embittered just at that point. It was
the tragedy of Miss Havisham. Everybody who has read _Great
Expectations_ remembers Miss Havisham. In some respects she is
Dickens' most striking and dramatic character. Poor Miss Havisham had
been disappointed on her wedding-day; and, in revenge, she remained for
the rest of her life dressed just as she was dressed when the blow
staggered her. When Pip came upon her, years afterwards, she was still
wearing her faded wedding-dress. She still had the withered flowers in
her hair, although her hair was whiter than the dress itself. For the
dress was yellow with age, and everything she wore had long since lost
its lustre. 'I saw, too,' says Pip, 'that the bride within the
bridal-dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had
no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that
the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and
that the figure, upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and
bone. Once I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair,
representing I know not what impossible personage lying in state. Once
I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in
the ashes of a rich dress that had been dug out of a vault under the
church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes
that moved and looked at me.' Poor Pip! And poor Miss Havisham! Miss
Havisham had lost her fish just as she was in the very act of landing
him. And she had let it sour and spoil her, and Pip was frightened at
the havoc it had wrought.

The peril touches life at every point. It especially affects those of
us who are called to be fishers of men. It is a great art, this human
angling, and needs infinite tact, and infinite subtilty, and infinite
patience. And, above all, it needs a resolute determination never on
any account whatever to be soured by disappointment. When I am tempted
to wind up my line, and give the whole thing up in despair, I revive my
flagging enthusiasm by recalling the rapture of my earlier catches.
What angler ever forgets the wild transport of landing his first
salmon? What minister ever forgets the spot on which he knelt with his
first convert? In the long and tedious hours when the waiting is
weary, and the nibblings vexatious, and the bites disappointing, let
him live on these w