very much under that vague impression.
Yet it is in many ways good for us to feel that we are going on,
--passing from the things which surround us,--advancing into the
undefined future, into the unknown land. And I think that sometimes we
all have vivid flashes of such a conviction. I dare say, my friend, you
have seen an old man, frail, soured, and shabby, and you have thought,
with a start, Perhaps _there_ is Myself of Future Years.

We human beings can stand a great deal. There is great margin allowed by
our constitution, physical and moral. I suppose there is no doubt that
a man may daily for years eat what is unwholesome, breathe air which is
bad, or go through a round of life which is not the best or the right
one for either body or mind, and yet be little the worse. And so men
pass through great trials and through long years, and yet are not
altered so very much. The other day, walking along the street, I saw a
man whom I had not seen for ten years. I knew that since I saw him last
he had gone through very heavy troubles, and that these had sat very
heavily upon him. I remembered how he had lost that friend who was the
dearest to him of all human beings, and I knew how broken down he had
been for many months after that great sorrow came. Yet there he was,
walking along, an unnoticed unit, just like any one else; and he was
looking wonderfully well. No doubt he seemed pale, worn, and anxious:
but he was very well and carefully dressed; he was walking with a brisk,
active step; and I dare say is feeling pretty well reconciled to being
what he is, and to the circumstances amid which he is living. Still, one
felt that somehow a tremendous change had passed over him. I felt
sorry for him, and all the more that he did not seem to feel sorry for
himself. It made me sad to think that some day I should be like him;
that perhaps in the eyes of my juniors I look like him already, careworn
and aging. I dare say in his feeling there was no such sense of falling
off. Perhaps he was tolerably content. He was walking so fast, and
looking so sharp, that I am sure he had no desponding feeling at the
time. Despondency goes with slow movements and with vague looks. The
sense of having materially fallen off is destructive to the eagle-eye.
Yes, he was tolerably content. We can go down-hill cheerfully, save at
the points where it is sharply brought home to us that we are going
down-hill. Lately I sat at dinner opposite an old lady wh