our, suspicious, fractious,
petted creature. I was amused, this morning, to read in the newspaper an
account of a very small incident which befell the new Primate of England
on his journey back to London, after being enthroned at Canterbury.
The reporter of that small incident takes occasion to record that
the Archbishop had quite charmed his travelling-companions in the
railway-carriage by the geniality and kindliness of his manner. I have
no doubt he did. I am sure he is a truly good Christian man. But think
of what a splendid training for producing geniality and kindliness he
has been going through for a great number of years! Think of the moral
influences which have been bearing on him for the last few weeks! We
should all be kindly and genial, if we had the same chance of being so.
But if Dr. Longley had a living of a hundred pounds a year, a fretful,
ailing wife, a number of half-fed and half-educated little children, a
dirty, miserable house, a bleak country round, and a set of wrong-headed
and insolent parishioners to keep straight, I venture to say he would
have looked, and been, a very different man in that railway-carriage
running up to London. Instead of the genial smiles that delighted his
fellow-travellers, (according to the newspaper-story,) his face would
have been sour, and his speech would have been snappish; he would have
leaned back in the corner of a second-class carriage, sadly calculating
the cost of his journey, and how part of it might be saved by going
without any dinner. Oh, if I found a four-leaved shamrock, I would
undertake to make a mighty deal of certain people I know! I would put an
end to their weary schemings to make the ends meet. I would cut off all
those wretched cares which jar miserably on the shaken nerves. I know
the burst of thankfulness and joy that would come, if some dismal load,
never to be cast off, were taken away. And I would take it off. I would
clear up the horrible muddle. I would make them happy: and in doing
_that_, I know that I should make them good.

* * * * *

But I have sought the four-leaved shamrock for a long time, and never
have found it; and so I am growing subdued to the conviction that I
never shall. Let us go back to the matter of Resignation, and think a
little longer about _that_.

Resignation, in any human being, means that things are not as you would
wish, and yet that you are content.

Who has all he wishes? There