w all
things; the cessation of human life is as common and natural as the
drawing of our breath; why then should we invest a natural, blessed,
beautiful event with murky lines of wrath and dread? The pitiful
wretch who flaunts his braggart defiance before the eyes of men and
shrieks his feeble contempt of the inevitable is worthy only of our
quiet scorn; but the grateful soul that bows humbly to the stroke of
fate and accepts death as thankfully as life is in all ways worthy of
admiration and vivid respect. We are prone to talk of our "rights,"
and some of us have a very exalted idea of the range which those
precious "rights" should cover. One of our poets goes so far as to
inquire in an amiable way, "What have we done to thee, O Death?" He
insinuates that Death is very unkind to ply the abhorred shears over
such nice, harmless creatures as we are. Let us, for manhood's sake,
have done with puerility; let us recognise that our "rights" have no
existence, and that we must perforce accept the burdens of life,
labour, and death that are laid upon us. We can do no good by
nourishing fears, by encouraging silly conventionalities, by shirking
the bald facts of life; and we should gently, joyfully, trustfully
look our fate in the face and fear nothing. Life will never be the
joyous pilgrimage that it ought to be until men have learned to crush
their pride, their doubts, their terrors, and have also learned to
regard the beautiful sleep as a holy and fitting reward only to be
rightly enjoyed by those who live purely, righteously, hopefully in
the sight of God and man.

XXV.

JOURNALISM.

When the mystic midnight passes, the bustle of Fleet Street slackens;
but on each side of the thoroughfare hundreds of workers with hand and
brain are toiling with eager intensity. In tall buildings here and
there the lights glitter on every floor, and throw their long shafts
through the gloom; not much activity is plainly visible, and yet
somehow the merest novice feels that there is a throb in the air, and
that some mysterious forces are working around him. Hurrying
messengers dash by, stray cabs rush along with a low rumble and sharp
clash of hoofs. But it is not in the street that the minds and bodies
of men are obviously in action; go inside one of the mighty palatial
offices, and you find yourself in the midst of such a hive of
marvellous industry as the world has never seen before. On one journal
as many as four hundred and