mother who tries to console her
broken heart by fancying her departed child absent on his wonted chase
after the dragon-fly, hums,

"How far to-day in chase, I wonder,
Has gone my hunter of the dragon-fly!"

I refrain from quoting other examples, for I know I could do only scant
justice to the pearly gems of our literature, were I to render into a
foreign tongue the thoughts which were wrung drop by drop from bleeding
hearts and threaded into beads of rarest value. I hope I have in a
measure shown that inner working of our minds which often presents an
appearance of callousness or of an hysterical mixture of laughter and
dejection, and whose sanity is sometimes called in question.

It has also been suggested that our endurance of pain and indifference
to death are due to less sensitive nerves. This is plausible as far as
it goes. The next question is,--Why are our nerves less tightly strung?
It may be our climate is not so stimulating as the American. It may be
our monarchical form of government does not excite us as much as the
Republic does the Frenchman. It may be that we do not read _Sartor
Resartus_ as zealously as the Englishman. Personally, I believe it was
our very excitability and sensitiveness which made it a necessity to
recognize and enforce constant self-repression; but whatever may be the
explanation, without taking into account long years of discipline in
self-control, none can be correct.

Discipline in self-control can easily go too far. It can well repress
the genial current of the soul. It can force pliant natures into
distortions and monstrosities. It can beget bigotry, breed hypocrisy or
hebetate affections. Be a virtue never so noble, it has its counterpart
and counterfeit. We must recognize in each virtue its own positive
excellence and follow its positive ideal, and the ideal of
self-restraint is to keep our mind _level_--as our expression is--or, to
borrow a Greek term, attain the state of _euthymia_, which Democritus
called the highest good.

The acme of self-control is reached and best illustrated in the first of
the two institutions which we shall now bring to view; namely,

THE INSTITUTIONS OF SUICIDE
AND REDRESS,

of which (the former known as _hara-kiri_ and the latter as
_kataki-uchi_ )many foreign writers have treated more or less fully.

To begin with suicide, let me state that I confine my observations only
to _seppuku_ or _kappuku_, popularly known as _hara-kiri