ings never from real troubles, which it braces men to bear, which it
delights men to bear well. Nor does it readily spring at all, in minds
that have conceived of life as a field of ordered duties, not as a chase
in which to hunt for gratifications.

*****

But the race of man, like that indomitable nature whence it sprang,
has medicating virtues of its own; the years and seasons bring various
harvests; the sun returns after the rain; and mankind outlives secular
animosities, as a single man awakens from the passions of a day. We
judge our ancestors from a more divine position; and the dust being a
little laid with several centuries, we can see both sides adorned with
human virtues and fighting with a show of right.

*****

It is a commonplace that we cannot answer for ourselves before we
have been tried. But it is not so common a reflection, and surely more
consoling, that we usually find ourselves a great deal braver and
better than we thought. I believe this is every one's experience; but
an apprehension that they may belie themselves in the future prevents
mankind from trumpeting this cheerful sentiment abroad. I wish
sincerely, for it would have saved me much trouble, there had been some
one to put me in a good heart about life when I was younger; to tell sue
how dangers are most portentous on a distant sight; and how the good
in a man's spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or
never deserts him in the hour of need. But we are all for tootling on
the sentimental flute in literature; and not a man among us will go to
the head of the march to sound the heady drums.

*****

It is a poor heart, and a poorer age, that cannot accept the conditions
of life with some heroic readiness.

*****

I told him I was not much afraid of such accidents; and at any rate
judged it unwise to dwell upon alarms or consider small perils in
the arrangement of life. Life itself I submitted, was a far too risky
business as a whole to make each additional particular of danger worth
regard.

*****

There is nothing but tit for tat in this world, though sometimes it be
a little difficult to trace; for the scores are older than we ourselves,
and there has never yet been a settling day since things were. You get
entertainment pretty much in proportion as you give. As long as we
were a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared at and followed like a quack
doctor or a caravan, we had no want of amusement in return; but as