h your eyes fixed on your own petty fortunes, while all the
gigantic ages mock you. Day by day you give pain to your own mind and
body; you hope against hope; you trust to be remembered, and you fancy
that you may perchance hear what men will say of you when you are
gone. All in vain. Be satisfied with the love of those about you; if
you can get but a dog to love you during your little life, cherish
that portion of affection. Work in your own petty sphere strenuously,
bravely, but without thought of what men may say of you. Perhaps you
are agonised by the thought of powers that are hidden in you--powers
that may never be known while you live. What matters it? So long as
you have the love of a faithful few among those dear to you, all the
fame that the earth can give counts for nothing. Take that which is
near to you, and value as naught the praises of a vague monstrous
world through which you pass as a shadow. Look at that squirrel who
twirls and twirls in his cage. He wears his heart out in his ceaseless
efforts at progression, and all the while his mocking prison whirls
under him without letting him progress one inch. How much happier he
would be if he stayed in his hutch and enjoyed his nuts! You are like
the restless squirrel; you make a great show of movement and some
noise, but you do not get forward at all. Rest quietly when your
necessary labour is done, and be sure that more than half the things
men struggle for and fail to attain would not be worth the having even
if the strugglers succeeded. Do not waste one moment; do not neglect
one duty, for a duty lost is the deadliest loss of all; snatch every
rational pleasure that comes within your reach; earn all the love you
can, for that is the most precious of all possessions, and leave the
search for fame to those who are petty and vain."

Such a cold and chilling speech would be a very good medicine for
uneasy vanity, but the best medicine of all is the contemplation of
the history of men who have flourished and loomed large before their
fellows, and who now have sunk into the night. How many mighty
warriors have made the earth tremble, filling the mouths of men with
words of fear or praise! They have passed away, and the only record of
their lives is a chance carving on a stone, a brief line written by
some curt historian. The glass of the years was brittle wherein they
gazed for a span; the glass is broken and all is gone. In the wastes
of Asia we find mighty r