we offset the glory of our manly years? Because their
narrowness cannot take in the contingencies that threaten peace, are
they blessed above all others? Does not the same narrowness cut them
off from the bright certainty that underlies all doubts and fears? If
ignorance is bliss, man stands at the summit of mortal misery, and
the scale of happiness is a descending one. We must go down into the
ocean-depths, where, for the scintillant soul, a dim, twilight instinct
lights up gelatinous lives. If childhood is indeed the happiest period,
then the mysterious God-breathed breath was no boon and the Deity is
cruel. Immortality were well exchanged for the blank of annihilation.

There is infinite talk of the dissipated illusions of youth, the paling
of bright, young dreams. Life, it is said, turns out to be different
from what was pictured. The rosy-hued morning fades away into the gray
and livid evening, the black and ghastly night. In especial cases it may
be so, but I do not believe it is the general experience. It surely need
not be. It should not be. I have found things a great deal better than I
expected. I am but one; but with all my oneness, with all that there is
of me, I protest against such shallow generalities. I think they are
slanderous of Him who ordained life, its processes and its vicissitudes.
He never made our dreams to outstrip our realizations. Every conception,
brain-born, has its execution, hand-wrought. Life is not a paltry
tin cup which the child drains dry, leaving the man to go weary and
hopeless, quaffing at it in vain with black, parched lips. It is a
fountain ever springing. It is a great deep, which the wisest has never
bounded, the grandest never fathomed.

It is not only idle, but stupid, to lament the departure of childhood's
joys. It is as if something precious and valued had been forcibly torn
from us, and we go sorrowing for lost treasure. But these things fall
off from us naturally; we do not give them up. We are never called upon
to give them up. There is no pang, no sorrow, no wrenching away of
a part of our lives. The baby lies in his cradle and plays with his
fingers and toes. There comes an hour when his fingers and toes no
longer afford him amusement. He has attained to the dignity of a rattle,
a whip, a ball. Has he suffered a loss? Has he not rather made a great
gain? When he passed from his toes to his toys, did he do it mournfully?
Does he look at his little feet and hands with