the variation
of events and circumstances.

*****

Overmastering pain--the most deadly and tragical element in life--alas!
pain has its own way with all of us; it breaks in, a rude visitant, upon
the fairy garden where the child wanders in a dream, no less surely
than it rules upon the field of battle, or sends the immortal war-god
whimpering to his father; and innocence, no more than philosophy, can
protect us from this sting.

*****

Where did you hear that it was easy to be honest? Do you find that in
your Bible? Easy? It is easy to be an ass and follow the multitude like
a blind, besotted bull in a stampede; and that, I am well aware, is
what you and Mrs. Grundy mean by being honest. But it will not bear the
stress of time nor the scrutiny of conscience.

*****

Though I have all my life been eager for legitimate distinction, I can
lay my hand upon my heart, at the end of my career, and declare there is
not one--no, nor yet life itself--which is worth acquiring or preserving
at the slightest cost of dignity.

*****

For surely, at this time of the day in the nineteenth century, there is
nothing that an honest man should fear more timorously than getting and
spending more than he deserves.

*****

It remains to be seen, by each man who would live a true life to himself
and not a merely specious life to society, how many luxuries he truly
wants and to how many he merely submits as to a social propriety; and
all these last he will immediately forswear. Let him do this, and he
will be surprised to find how little money it requires to keep him in
complete contentment and activity of mind and senses. Life at any level
among the easy classes is conceived upon a principle of rivalry, where
each man and each household must ape the tastes and emulate the display
of others. One is delicate in eating, another in wine, a third in
furniture or works of art or dress; and I, who care nothing for any of
these refinements, who am perhaps a plain athletic creature and love
exercise, beef, beer, flannel-shirts, and a camp bed, am yet called upon
to assimilate all these other tastes and make these foreign occasions
of expenditure my own. It may be cynical; I am sure I will be told it is
selfish; but I will spend my money as I please and for my own intimate
personal gratification, and should count myself a nincompoop indeed to
lay out the colour of a halfpenny on any fancied social decency or duty.
I shall not wear gloves