ving, like Pippa in
the poem, my own thoughts with hers. What could I have told her? Little
enough; and yet all the heart requires. How the world gives and takes
away, and brings sweethearts near only to separate them again into
distant and strange lands; but to love is the great amulet which
makes the world a garden; and 'hope, which comes to all,' outwears the
accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave
and death. Easy to say: yea, but also, by God's mercy, both easy and
grateful to believe!

*****

As a matter of fact, although few things are spoken of with more fearful
whisperings than this prospect of death, few have less influence on
conduct under healthy circumstances.... If we clung as devotedly as some
philosophers pretend we do to the abstract idea of life, or were half
as frightened as they make out we are, for the subversive accident
that ends it all, the trumpets might sound by the hour and no one would
follow them into battle--the blue-peter might fly at the truck, but who
would climb into a sea-going ship? Think (if these philosophers were
right) with what a preparation of spirit we should affront the daily
peril of the dinner-table: a deadlier spot than any battle-field
in history, where the far greater proportion of our ancestors have
miserably left their bones! What woman would ever be lured into
marriage, so much more dangerous than the wildest sea? And what would it
be to grow old?

*****

If a man knows he will sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he
will have a bottle of the best in every inn, and look upon all his
extravagances as so much gained upon the thieves. And, above all, where,
instead of simply spending, he makes a profitable investment for some
of his money when it will be out of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk
living, and, above all, when it is healthful, is just so much gained
upon the wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the less in our
pockets, the more in our stomachs, when he cries, 'Stand and deliver.'

*****

It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a
miser. It is better to live and be done with it, than to die daily in
the sickroom. By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not
give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push
and see what can be accomplished in a week. It is not only in finished
undertakings that we ought to honour useful labour. A spirit goes out
of the