hing beyond the mere natural instinct of
acquiescence in what is inevitable; something beyond the benevolent law
in the human mind, that it shall adapt itself to whatever circumstances
it may be placed in; something beyond the doing of the gentle comforter
Time. Yes, it is wonderful what people can go through, wonderful what
people can get reconciled to. I dare say my friend Smith, when his hair
began to fall off, made frantic efforts to keep it on. I have no doubt
he anxiously tried all the vile concoctions which quackery advertises in
the newspapers, for the advantage of those who wish for luxuriant locks.
I dare say for a while it really weighed upon his mind, and disturbed
his quiet, that he was getting bald. But now he has quite reconciled
himself to his lot; and with a head smooth and sheeny as the egg of
the ostrich, Smith goes on through life, and feels no pang at the
remembrance of the ambrosial curls of his youth. Most young people,
I dare say, think it will be a dreadful thing to grow old: a girl of
eighteen thinks it must be an awful sensation to be thirty. Believe me,
not at all. You are brought to it bit by bit; and when you reach the
spot, you rather like the view. And it is so with graver things. We grow
able to do and to bear that which it is needful that we should do and
bear. As is the day, so the strength proves to be. And you have heard
people tell you truly, that they have been enabled to bear what they
never thought they could have come through with their reason or their
life. I have no fear for the Christian man, so he keeps to the path of
duty. Straining up the steep hill, his heart will grow stout in just
proportion to its steepness. Yes, and if the call to martyrdom came, I
should not despair of finding men who would show themselves equal to it,
even in this commonplace age, and among people who wear Highland cloaks
and knickerbockers. The martyr's strength would come with the martyr's
day. It is because there is no call for it now, that people look so
little like it.

It is very difficult, in this world, to strongly enforce a truth,
without seeming to push it into an extreme. You are very apt, in
avoiding one error, to run into the opposite error; forgetting that
truth and right lie generally between two extremes. And in agreeing with
Sydney Smith, as to the wisdom and the duty of "taking short views," let
us take care of appearing to approve the doings of those foolish and
unprincipled peopl