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 EDITED BY 
 
 FLORENCE L. TUCKER 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
 
 I'UHI.ISHF.RS 

 
 Copyright, igog 
 By Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 
 
 This volume is issued by arrangement with 
 Charles Scribner's Sons, authorized publishers 
 of' Stevenson's Complete Works. 
 
 THE UNIVF.RSITY PFIESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 PR 
 
 . . . Those he loves that underprop 
 With daily virtues heaven's top. 
 And bear the falling sky with ease, 
 Unfrowning caryatides. 
 
 Our Lady of tie Snows. 
 
 8944(17
 
 ^^i^^W^^Q^^^^^^'^"^^^'^ 
 
 PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 "I I /"E on this side the water think of Robert 
 ^ ^ Louis Stevenson oftenest, perhaps, in his 
 island home, working — this indefatigable "idler," 
 as he called himself — from six o'clock in the 
 morning until four in the afternoon ; dictating 
 with his hands when voice as well as strength 
 failed ; and when he was better, moved by a rest- 
 less and superabundant energy, the last to retire at 
 night, and the first to rise in the morning. There 
 is something peculiarly appealing in this isolation, 
 as we fancy the lonely exile pacing through his 
 nightly walk in the unlighted darkness while all of 
 his household slept, and rising in the dusk of the 
 Samoan morning with no cheerful, stirring sound 
 of life to greet him but the monotonous chirp of a 
 single lone bird. 
 
 It touches us like the recollection of the sleep- 
 less nights he tells of in Nuits Blanches^ when the 
 delicate child was held up by his faithful nurse to 
 look out at the window, while together they 
 wondered if in other houses little children were 
 
 L vii J
 
 wakeful ; and again and again he asked, " When 
 will the carts come in ? " 
 
 Though he worked on faithfully and cheerfully 
 to the very last, finding interest in the strange 
 peoples about him, and sending back his messages 
 to the world he had bidden farewell, we think his 
 brave spirit must have sometimes cried out in that 
 long night of banishment, " When will the carts 
 come in ? " 
 
 And thinking of him thus, our affection goes 
 out to him even as before that fateful December 
 day at Valaima and the making of the lonely grave 
 on Mount Vaea; and there has been gathered here 
 certain of his sayings into a sort of little store- 
 house of loving memory. The moral reflections 
 dropped by the way are the personal side of a man, 
 and as much as any known writer Stevenson has 
 been loved for his personality. This little volume 
 has been compiled for his friends — the selections 
 are such as would be the remarks made in conver- 
 sation with spirits congenial and sympathetic, and 
 so appeal to every one alike ; each has the same 
 message for all, each is the word of cherished 
 
 recollection. 
 
 F. L. T. 
 Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 [ viii J
 
 JANUARY 
 
 JANUARY FIRST 
 
 EVERY sin is our last ; every first of January 
 a remarkable turning-point in our career. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque, 
 
 JANUARY SECOND 
 
 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 finished in a week. It is not only 
 in finished undertakings that we ought to honour 
 useful labour. A spirit goes out of the man who 
 means execution, which outlives the most un- 
 timely ending. All who have meant good work 
 with their whole hearts, have done good work, 
 although they may die before they have the time 
 to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and 
 cheerfuUv has left a hopeful impulse behind it in 
 the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. 
 
 Aes Triplex. 
 
 [ I 1
 
 JANUARY THIRD 
 
 There is but one test of a good life: that the 
 man shall continue to grow more difficult about 
 his own behaviour. That is to be good : there 
 is no other virtue attainable. 
 
 Discipline of Conscience. 
 
 JANUARY FOURTH 
 
 It is a commonplace, that we cannot answer for 
 ourselves before we have been tried. But it is 
 not so common a reflection, and surely more 
 consoling, that we usually find ourselves a great 
 deal braver and better than we thought. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 JANUARY FIFTH 
 
 To make this earth our hermitage, 
 A cheerful and a changeful page, 
 God's bright and intricate device 
 Of days and seasons doth suffice. 
 
 The House Beautiful. 
 
 JANUARY SIXTH 
 
 What do we owe our parents ? No man can 
 owe love; none can owe obedience. We owe, I 
 think, chiefly pity; for we are the pledge of their 
 dear and joyful union, we have been the solici- 
 tude of their days and the anxiety of their nights, 
 we have made them, though by no will of ours, 
 to carry the burthen of our sins, sorrows, and
 
 physical infirmities ; and too many of us grow 
 
 up at length to disappoint the purpose of their 
 
 lives and requite their care and piety with cruel 
 
 pangs. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 JANUARY SEVENTH 
 
 We are most of us attached to our opinions; 
 
 that is one of the " natural affections " of which 
 
 we hear so much in youth ; but few of us are 
 
 altogether free from paralysing doubts and 
 
 scruples. 
 
 Preface to Familiar Studies, 
 
 JANUARY EIGHTH 
 
 Restfulness is a quality for cattle ; the virtues 
 arc all active, life is alert, and it is in repose 
 that men prepare themselves for evil. 
 
 Talk and Talkers. 
 
 JANUARY NINTH 
 
 A little society is needful to show a man his 
 failings; for if he lives entirely by himself, he 
 has no occasion to fall, and like a soldier in 
 time of peace, becomes both weak and vain. 
 r,ut a little solitude must be used, or we grow 
 content with current virtues and forget the ideal. 
 In society we lose scrupulous brightness of 
 
 [ 3]
 
 honour; in solitude we lose the courage necessary 
 to face our own imperfections. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 JANUARY TENTH 
 
 Fond as it may appear, we labour and refrain, 
 
 not for the rewards of any single life, but with 
 
 a timid eye upon the lives and memories of our 
 
 successors; and where no one is to succeed, of 
 
 his own family, or his own tongue, I doubt 
 
 whether Rothschilds would make money or Cato 
 
 practise virtue. 
 
 Death. 
 
 JANUARY ELEVENTH 
 
 To the grown person, cold mutton is cold mut- 
 ton all the world over; not all the mythology 
 ever invented by man will make it better or 
 worse to him ; the broad fact, the clamant 
 reality, of the mutton carries away before it 
 such seductive figments. But for the child it 
 is still possible to weave an enchantment over 
 eatables ; and if he has but read of a dish in a 
 story-book, it will be heavenlv manna to him 
 
 for a week. 
 
 ChilcTs Play. 
 
 [4]
 
 JANUARY TWELFTH 
 
 When a man is in a fair way and sees all life 
 open in front of him, he seems to himself to 
 make a very important figure in the world. . . . 
 But once he is dead, were he as brave as 
 Hercules or as wise as Solomon, he is soon 
 
 forgotten. 
 
 The Sire de Mal'etroit" s Door. 
 
 JANUARY THIRTEENTH 
 
 The names of virtues exercise a charm on most 
 of us ; we must lay claim to all of them, how- 
 ever incompatiblej we must all be both daring 
 and prudent ; we must all vaunt our pride and 
 go to the stake for our humility. 
 
 Of Love and Politics. 
 
 JANUARY FOURTEENTH 
 
 Life, my old shipmate, life, at any moment and 
 in any view, is as dangerous as a sinking ship; 
 and yet it is man's handsome fashion to carry 
 umbrellas, to wear indiarubber overshoes, to 
 begin vast works, and to conduct himself in 
 every way as if he might hope to be eternal. 
 
 Fahle of the Sinking Ship. 
 
 JANUARY FIFTEENTH 
 
 We arc subject to physical passions and contor- 
 tions -, the voice breaks and changes, and speaks 
 by unconscious and winning inflections •, wc 
 
 [5 ]
 
 have legible countenances, like an open book ; 
 things that cannot be said look eloquently 
 through the eyes ; and the soul, not locked into 
 the body as a dungeon, dwells ever on the 
 threshold with appealing signals. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 JANUARY SIXTEENTH 
 
 No art, it may be said, was ever perfect, and 
 
 not many noble, that has not been mirthfully 
 
 conceived. And no man, it may be added, was 
 
 ever anything but a wet blanket and a cross to 
 
 his companions who boasted not a copious spirit 
 
 of enjoyment. 
 
 FontainebUau. 
 
 JANUARY SEVENTEENTH 
 
 All sins are murder, even as all life is war. I 
 
 behold your race, like starving mariners on a 
 
 raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine 
 
 and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins 
 
 beyond the moment of their acting; I find in 
 
 all that the last consequence is death ; and to 
 
 my eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her 
 
 mother with such taking graces on a question 
 
 of a ball, drips no less with human gore than 
 
 such a murderer as yourself, 
 
 Markheim. 
 
 [6]
 
 JANUARY EIGHTEENTH 
 
 Success wins glory, but it kills affection, which 
 misfortune fosters 
 
 The Story of a Plantation. 
 
 JANUARY NINETEENTH 
 
 A generous prayer is never presented in vain ; 
 the petition may be refused, but the petitioner 
 is always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious 
 
 visitation. 
 
 The Merry Men. 
 
 JANUARY TWENTIETH 
 
 Of those who fail, I do not speak — despair 
 should be sacred ; but to those who even mod- 
 estly succeed, the changes of their life bring 
 interest : a job found, a shilling saved, a dainty 
 earned, all these are wells of pleasure springing 
 afresh for the successful poor ; and it is not 
 from these but from the villa dweller that we 
 hear complaints of the unworthincss of life. 
 
 The Day after To-morron.v. 
 
 JANUARY TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 Despise riches, avoid the debasing influence of 
 cities. Hygiene — hygiene and mediocrity of 
 fortune — these be your watchwords during life. 
 
 The Treasure of Franchard. 
 
 t 7]
 
 JANUARY TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 The salary in any business under heaven is not 
 the only, nor indeed, the first question. That 
 you should continue to exist is a matter for your 
 own consideration j but that your business should 
 be first honest, and second useful, are points in 
 which honour and morality are concerned. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 JANUARY TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse 
 degree of failure than to push forward pluckily 
 and make a fall. It is lawful to pray God that 
 we be not led into temptation ; but not lawful 
 to skulk from those that come to us. 
 
 Virginibus Puer'tsque. 
 
 JANUARY TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 Wherever a man is, he will find something to 
 please and pacify him : in the town he will meet 
 pleasant faces of men and women, and see beau- 
 tiful flowers at a window, or hear a cage-bird 
 singing at the corner of the gloomiest street ; 
 and for the country, there is no country without 
 some amenity — let him only look for it in the 
 right spirit, and he will surely find. 
 
 Unpleasant Places. 
 
 [8 ]
 
 JANUARY TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 We talk of bad and good — everything, indeed, 
 is good which is conceived with honesty and 
 executed with communicative ardour. 
 
 A Note on Realism. 
 
 JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH 
 
 To be suddenly snufFed out in the middle of 
 ambitious schemes, is tragical enough at best -, 
 but when a man has been grudging himself his 
 own life in the meanwhile, and saving up every- 
 thing for the festival that was never to be, it 
 becomes that hysterically moving sort of tragedy 
 which lies on the confines of farce. 
 
 Crabbed Age and Youth. 
 
 JANUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH 
 
 The respectable are not led so much by any 
 
 desire of applause as by a positive need for 
 
 countenance. The weaker and the tamer the 
 
 man, the more will he require this support ; and 
 
 any positive quality relieves him, by just so much, 
 
 of this dependence. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Samuel Pepys. 
 
 JANUARY TWENTY-EK^HTM 
 
 That is one (jf the best features of the heavenly 
 bodies, that they belong to everybody in par- 
 ticular. 
 
 Providence and the Guitar. 
 
 [9]
 
 JANUARY TWENTY-NINTH 
 
 From those who mark the divisions on a scale to 
 those who measure the boundaries of empires or 
 the distance of the heavenly stars, it is by careful 
 method and minute, unwearying attention that 
 men rise even to material exactness or to sure 
 knowledge even of external and constant things. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 JANUARY THIRTIETH 
 
 It is a great thing, believe me, to present a good 
 normal type of the nation you belong to. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 JANUARY THIRTY-FIRST 
 
 Where a man in not the best of circumstances 
 preserves composure of mind, and relishes ale 
 and tobacco, and his wife and children, in the 
 intervals of dull and unremunerative labour; 
 where a man in this predicament can afford a 
 lesson by the way to what are called his intellec- 
 tual superiors, there is plainly something to be 
 lost, as well as something to be gained, by teaching 
 him to think differently. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Walt Whitman. 
 
 [ ^o ]
 
 FEBRUARY 
 
 FEBRUARY FIRST 
 
 OF all unfortunates there is one creature (for 
 I will not call him man) conspicuous in 
 misfortune. This is he who has forfeited his 
 birthright of expression, who has cultivated artful 
 intonations, who has taught his face tricks, like 
 a pet monkey, and on every side perverted or 
 cut off his means of communication with his 
 
 fellow-men. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 FEBRUARY SECOND 
 
 To be deeply interested in the accidents of our 
 existence, to enjoy keenly the mixed texture of 
 human experience, rather leads a man to dis- 
 regard precautions, and risk his neck against a 
 straw. For surely the love of living is stronger 
 in an Alpine climber roping over a peril, or a 
 hunter riding merrily at a stiff fence, than in a 
 creature who lives upon a diet and walks a meas- 
 ured distance in the interest of his constitution. 
 
 Acs Triplex. 
 
 [ - J
 
 FEBRUARY THIRD 
 
 Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular 
 letter to the friends of him who writes it. They 
 alone take his meaning ; they find private mes- 
 sages, assurances of love, and expressions of 
 gratitude dropped for them in every corner. The 
 public is but a generous patron who defrays 
 the postage. Yet, though the letter is directed 
 to all, we have an old and kindly custom of 
 addressing it on the outside to one. Of what 
 shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his 
 
 friends ? 
 
 Letter to Sidney Col'vin. 
 
 FEBRUARY FOURTH 
 
 There are duties which come before gratitude, 
 
 and offences which justly divide friends, far 
 
 more acquaintances. 
 
 Father Damien. 
 
 FEBRUARY FIFTH 
 
 We cannot trust ourselves to behave with 
 
 decency; we cannot trust our consciences; and 
 
 the remedy proposed is to elect a round number 
 
 of our neighbours, pretty much at random, and 
 
 say to these: "■Be ye our conscience; make 
 
 laws so wise, and continue from year to year to 
 
 administer them so wisely, that they shall save 
 
 us from ourselves and make us righteous and 
 
 happy, world without end. Amen." 
 
 The Day after To-morroiu.
 
 FEBRUARY SIXTH 
 
 The longer we live, the more we perceive the 
 sagacity of Aristotle and the other old philoso- 
 phers ; and though I have all my life been eager 
 for legitimate distinctions, 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. 
 
 The Master of Ballantrae. 
 
 FEBRUARY SEVENTH 
 
 Solitude is the climax of the negative virtues. 
 When we go to bed after a solitary day we can 
 tell ourselves that we have not been unkind nor 
 dishonest nor untruthful ; and the negative vir- 
 tues are agreeable to that dangerous faculty we 
 
 call the conscience. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 FEBRUARY EIGHTH 
 
 I would put a good name upon a virtue; you 
 
 will not overdo it ; they are not so enchanting 
 
 in themselves. 
 
 Of Love and Politics. 
 
 FEBRUARY NINTH 
 
 Money enters in two different characters into 
 the scheme of life. A certain amount, varying 
 with the number and empire of our desires, is a 
 true necessary to each one of us in the present 
 
 [ 13 1
 
 order of society ; but beyond that amount, money 
 is a commodity to be bought or not to be bought, 
 a luxury in which we may either indulge or stint 
 ourselves, like any other. And there are many 
 luxuries that we may legitimately prefer to it, 
 such as a grateful conscience, a country life, or 
 the woman of our inclination. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Thoreau. 
 
 FEBRUARY TENTH 
 
 It is but a lying cant that would represent the 
 merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly 
 toiling for mankind, and then most useful when 
 they are most absorbed in their transactions ; for 
 the man is more important than his services. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 FEBRUARY ELEVENTH 
 
 It is good to have been young in youth and, as 
 years go on, to grow older. Many are already 
 old before they are through their teens ; but to 
 travel deliberately through one's ages is to get 
 the heart out of a liberal education. 
 
 Letter to IVilliam Ernest Henley. 
 
 FEBRUARY TWELFTH 
 
 On my tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to 
 
 get these words inscribed : " He clung to his 
 
 paddle." 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 [ U 1
 
 FEBRUARY THIRTEENTH 
 
 God made them twain by intention, and brought 
 
 true love into the world, to be man's hope and 
 
 woman's comfort. 
 
 T^he Black Arroiv. 
 
 FEBRUARY FOURTEENTH 
 
 Solitude for its own sake should surely never be 
 preferred. We are bound by the strongest obli- 
 gations to busy ourselves amid the world of men, 
 if it be only to crack jokes. The finest trait in 
 the character of St. Paul was his readiness to be 
 damned for the salvation of anybody else. And 
 surely we should all endure a little weariness to 
 make one face look brighter or one hour go 
 more pleasantly in this mixed world. 
 
 Rejiections and Remarks. 
 
 FEBRUARY FIFTEENTH 
 
 A man who must separate himself from his 
 neighbours' habits in order to be happy, is in 
 much the same case with one who requires to 
 take opium for the same purpose. What we 
 want to sec is one who can breast into the 
 world, do a man's work, and still preserve his 
 first and pure enjoyment of existence. 
 
 Familiar HtuJia — Thorcau. 
 
 [ '5 1
 
 FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH 
 
 Things are fit for art so far only as they are 
 both true and apparent. 
 
 IVorks of Edgar Allan Poe. 
 
 FEBRUARY SEVENTEENTH 
 
 Faces have a trick of growing more and more 
 
 spiritualised and abstract in the memory, until 
 
 nothing remains of them but a look, a haunting 
 
 expression ; just that secret quality in a face that 
 
 is apt to slip out somehow under the cunningest 
 
 painter's touch and leave the portrait dead for 
 
 the lack of it. 
 
 An Autumn Effect. 
 
 FEBRUARY EIGHTEENTH 
 
 Late years are still in limbo to us ; but the more 
 distant past is all that we possess in life, the corn 
 already harvested and stored forever in the grange 
 of memory. ... If I desire to live long, it is 
 that I may have the more to look back upon. 
 
 A Retrospect. 
 
 FEBRUARY NINETEENTH 
 
 One of the things that we profess to teach our 
 young is a respect for truth ; and I cannot think 
 this piece of education will be crowned with any 
 great success, so long as some of us practise and 
 the rest openly approve of public falsehood. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 [ i6 ]
 
 FEBRUARY TWENTIETH 
 
 If we are indeed here to perfect and complete 
 our own natures, and grow larger, stronger, and 
 more sympathetic against some nobler career in 
 the future, we had all best bestir ourselves to the 
 utmost while we have the time. 
 
 Crabbed Age and Youth. 
 
 FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel. 
 Once you are married, there is nothing left for 
 you, not even suicide, but to be good. 
 
 Virginibus Puer'tsque. 
 
 FEBRUARY TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 In a man who finds all things good, you will 
 scarce expect much zeal for negative virtues : 
 the active alone will have a charm for him ; 
 abstinence, however wise, however kind, will 
 always seem to such a judge entirely mean and 
 
 partly impious. 
 
 Memories and Portraits. 
 
 FEBRUARY TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 Forth from the casemate, on the plain 
 Where honour has the world to gain, 
 Pour forth and bravely do your part, 
 O knights of the unshielded heart ! 
 Forth and for ever forward ! — out 
 From prudent turret and redoubt, 
 
 L '7 J
 
 And in the mellay charge amain, 
 To fall, but yet to rise again ! 
 
 Our Lady of the Snoivs, 
 
 FEBRUARY TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 The faults of married people continually spur 
 
 up each of them, hour by hour, to do better and 
 
 to meet and love upon a higher ground. And 
 
 ever, between the failures, there will come 
 
 glimpses of kind virtues to encourage and 
 
 console. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 Blessed nature, healthy, temperate nature, abhors 
 and exterminates excess. Human law, in this 
 matter, imitates at a great distance her pro- 
 visions; and we must strive to supplement the 
 
 efl'orts of the law. 
 
 The Treasure of Franchard. 
 
 FEBRUARY TWENTY-SIXTH 
 
 It is the business of this life to make excuses 
 
 for others, but none for ourselves. We should 
 
 be clearly persuaded of our own misconduct, for 
 
 that is the part of knowledge in which wc are 
 
 most apt to be defective. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 FEBRUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH 
 
 All our arts and occupations lie wholly on the 
 surface ; it is on the surface that we perceive 
 
 [ '8 ]
 
 their beauty, fitness, and significance; and to 
 prv below is to be appalled by their emptiness 
 and shocked by th« coarseness of the strings 
 
 and pulleys. 
 
 On Style in Literature. 
 
 FEBRUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH 
 
 In unbeloved toils, even under the prick of 
 necessity, no man is continually sedulous. Once 
 eliminate the fear of starvation, once eliminate 
 or bound the hope of riches, and we shall see 
 plenty of skulking and malingering. 
 
 The Day after To-morro'w. 
 
 FEBRUARY TWENTY-NINTH 
 
 There is something in marriage so natural and 
 inviting, that the step has an air of great sim- 
 plicity and ease; it offers to bury for ever many 
 aching preoccupations ; it is to afford us unfailing 
 and familiar company through life; it opens up 
 a smiling prospect of the blest and passive kind 
 of love, rather than the blessing and active ; it 
 is approached not only through the delights of 
 courtship, but by a public performance and 
 repeated legal signatures. A rnan naturally thinks 
 it will go hard with him if he cannot be good 
 and fortunate and happy within such august 
 
 circumvallalions. 
 
 Virginibus Piteris'/ue. 
 
 [ 19 1
 
 ^^^^^■^^^^B^^^^^^^^^^^"^*^ 
 
 MARCH 
 
 MARCH FIRST 
 
 TF I have faltered more or less 
 
 In my great task of happiness ; 
 If I have moved among my race 
 And shown no glorious morning face; 
 If beams from happy human eyes 
 Have moved me not ; if morning skies, 
 Books, and my food, and summer rain 
 Knocked on my sullen heart in vain : — 
 Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take 
 And stab my spirit broad awake ; 
 Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, 
 Choose thou, before that spirit die, 
 A piercing pain, a killing sin. 
 And to my dead heart run them in ! 
 
 The Celestial Surgeon. 
 
 MARCH SECOND 
 
 Life is so short and insecure that I would not 
 
 hurry away from any pleasure. 
 
 Markheim. 
 
 \ 21 1
 
 MARCH THIRD 
 
 A happy man or woman is a better thing to find 
 than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating 
 focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room 
 is as though another candle had been lighted. 
 
 An Apology for Idlers. 
 
 MARCH FOURTH 
 
 It is the property of things seen for the first time, 
 
 or for the first time after long, like the flowers 
 
 in spring, to reawaken in us the sharp edge of 
 
 sense and that impression of mystic strangeness 
 
 which otherwise passes out of life with the 
 
 coming of years; but the sight of a loved face 
 
 is what renews a man's character from the 
 
 fountain upwards. 
 
 Will 0- the Mill. 
 
 MARCH FIFTH 
 
 Many a man's destiny has been settled by nothing 
 apparently more grave than a pretty face on the 
 opposite side of the street and a couple of bad 
 companions round the corner. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Franfois Villon. 
 
 MARCH SIXTH 
 
 Talk should proceed by instances ; by the appo- 
 site, not the expository. It should keep close 
 along the lines of humanity, near the bosoms 
 
 [ 22 ]
 
 and businesses of men, at the level where h'ls- 
 tory, fiction, and experience intersect and illumi- 
 nate each other. 
 
 Talk and Talkers. 
 
 MARCH SEVENTH 
 
 The Lion is the King of Beasts, but he is 
 
 scarcely suitable for a domestic pet. In the 
 
 same way, I suspect love is rather too violent a 
 
 passion to make, in all cases, a good domestic 
 
 sentiment. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 MARCH EIGHTH 
 
 A thousand interests spring up in the process of 
 the ages and a thousand perish ; that is now an 
 eccentricity or a lost art which was once the 
 fashion of an empire -, and those only are peren- 
 nial matters that rouse us to-day, and that roused 
 men in all epochs of the past. 
 
 Memories and Portraits. 
 
 MARCH NINTH 
 
 Our faith is not the highest truth that we per- 
 ceive, but the highest that wc have been able to 
 assimilate into the very texture and method of 
 
 our thinking. 
 
 Familiar Studies — H'ult Whitman. 
 
 [23 ]
 
 MARCH TENTH 
 
 It is as natural and as right for a young man to 
 be imprudent and exaggerated, to live in swoops 
 and circles, and beat about his cage like any 
 other wild thing newly captured, as it is for old 
 men to turn gray, or mothers to love their off- 
 spring, or heroes to die for something worthier 
 
 than their lives. 
 
 Crabbed Age and Youth. 
 
 MARCH ELEVENTH 
 
 Love is not love that cannot build a home. 
 
 And you call it love to grudge and quarrel and 
 
 pick faults ? 
 
 Of Lo<ve and Politics. 
 
 MARCH TWELFTH 
 
 The race of man, like that indomitable nature 
 whence it sprang, has medicating virtues of its 
 own ; the years and seasons bring various har- 
 vests ; the sun returns after the rain; and man- 
 kind outlives secular animosities, as a single man 
 awakens from the passions of a day. 
 
 The Country of the Camisards. 
 
 MARCH THIRTEENTH 
 
 When people serve the kingdom of heaven with 
 a pass-book in their hands, I should always be 
 afraid lest they should carry the same commercial 
 
 [ 24 ]
 
 spirit into their dealings with their fellow-men, 
 
 which would make a sad and sordid business of 
 
 this life. 
 
 Doivn the Oise. 
 
 MARCH FOURTEENTH 
 
 It is easy to be a conservator of the discomforts 
 
 of others ; indeed, it is only our good qualities 
 
 we find it irksome to conserve. 
 
 Old To-wn. 
 
 MARCH FIFTEENTH 
 
 It is true that we might do a vast amount of 
 good if we were wealthy, but it is also highly 
 improbable; not many do; and the art of growing 
 rich is not only quite distinct from that of doing 
 good, but the practice of the one does not at all 
 train a man for practising the other. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Thoreau. 
 
 MARCH SIXTEENTH 
 
 We reckon our lives, I hardly know why, from 
 the date of our first sorry appearance in society, 
 as if from a first humiliation ; for no actor can 
 come upon the stage with a worse grace. 
 
 The Treasure qf Franchard. 
 
 MARCH SEVENTEENTH 
 
 I am sorry indeed that I have no Greek, but I 
 should be sorrier si ill if I were dc;ui ; nor do I 
 
 [ 25 ]
 
 know the name of that branch of knowledtre 
 
 which is worth acquiring at the price of a brain 
 
 fever. 
 
 Some College Memories. 
 
 MARCH EIGHTEENTH 
 
 O toiling hands of mortals ! O unwearied 
 
 feet, travelling ye know not whither ! Soon, 
 
 soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on 
 
 some conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way 
 
 further, against the setting sun, descry the spires 
 
 of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own 
 
 blessedness ; for to travel hopefully is a better 
 
 thing than to arrive, and the true success is to 
 
 labour. 
 
 El Dorado. 
 
 MARCH NINETEENTH 
 
 It is only by trying to understand others that 
 we can get our own hearts understood ; and in 
 matters of human feeling the clement judge is 
 the most successful pleader. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 MARCH TWENTIETH 
 
 The truth that is suppressed by friends is the 
 readiest weapon of the enemy. 
 
 Father Damien. 
 
 [ 26 ]
 
 MARCH TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 Wherever we are, it is but a stage on the way 
 to somcvvhere else, and whatever we do, however 
 well we do it, it is only a preparation to do 
 something else that shall be different. 
 
 Letters from Samoa to Young People. 
 
 MARCH TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 It is perhaps one of the most touching things 
 in human nature, as it is a commonplace of 
 psychology, that when a man has just lost hope 
 or confidence in one love, he is then most eager 
 to find and lean upon another. 
 
 Some Aspects of Robert Burns. 
 
 MARCH TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 No considerate man can approach marriage 
 without deep concern. I, he will think, who 
 have made hitherto so poor a business of my 
 own life, am now about to embrace the responsi- 
 bility of another's. Henceforth, there shall be 
 two to suffer from my faults ; and that other 
 is the one whom I most desire to shield from 
 suffering. In view of our impotence and folly, it 
 seems an act of presumption to involve another's 
 
 destiny with ours. 
 
 Refections and Remarks. 
 
 \ -• ]
 
 MARCH TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 Wc speak of hardships, but the true hardship is 
 to be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage 
 life in our own dull and foolish manner. 
 
 Our Lady of the Snoivs. 
 
 MARCH TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 Alas, as we get up in life, and are more pre- 
 occupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a 
 thing that must be worked for. 
 
 Trwvels nxiith a Donkey. 
 
 MARCH TWENTY-SIXTH 
 
 We are apt to make so much of the tragedy of 
 death, and think so little of the enduring tragedy 
 of some men's lives, that we see more to lament 
 for in a life cut off in the midst of usefulness 
 and love, than in one that miserably survives all 
 love and usefulness, and goes about the world 
 the phantom of itself, without hope, or joy, or 
 
 any consolation. 
 
 An Autumn Effect. 
 
 MARCH TWENTY-SEVENTH 
 
 While we have little to try us, we are angry 
 with little; small annoyances do not bear their 
 justification on their faces ; but when we are 
 overtaken by a great sorrow or perplexity, the 
 
 [ 28 ]
 
 greatness of our concern sobers us so that we see 
 more clearly and think with more consideration. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 MARCH TWENTY-EIGHTH 
 
 Pinches, buffets, the glow of hope, the shock 
 
 of disappointment, furious contention with 
 
 obstacles: these are the true elixir for all vital 
 
 spirits, these are what they seek alike in their 
 
 romantic enterprises and their unromantic 
 
 dissipations. 
 
 The Day after To-morroiu. 
 
 MARCH TWENY-NINTH 
 
 Without fresh air, you only require a bad heart, 
 and a remarkable command of the Queen's 
 English, to become such another as Dean Swift. 
 
 Across the Plains. 
 
 MARCH THIRTIETH 
 
 On the whole, the most religious exercise for 
 the aged is probably to recall their own experi- 
 ence ; so many fricntis dead, so many hopes 
 disappointed, so many slips and stumbles, and 
 withal so many bright days and smiling provi- 
 dences*, there is surely the matter of a very 
 
 c]o(juent sermon in this. 
 
 An Inland Voyav^e. 
 
 [ 29 ]
 
 MARCH THIRTY-FIRST 
 
 By the report of our elders, this nervous prepara- 
 tion for old age is only trouble thrown away. 
 We fall on guard, and after all it is a friend who 
 comes to meet us. After the sun is down and 
 the west faded, the heavens begin to fill with 
 shining stars. So, as we grow old, a sort of 
 equable jog-trot of feeling is substituted for the 
 violent ups and downs of passion and disgust; 
 the same influence that restrains our hopes, 
 quiets our apprehensions; if the pleasures are 
 less intense, the troubles are milder and more 
 tolerable; and in a word, this period for which 
 we are asked to hoard up everything as for a 
 time of famine, is, in its own right, the richest, 
 
 easiest, and happiest of life. 
 
 Crabbed Age and Youth. 
 
 [30]
 
 ^^^^g^ 
 
 APRIL 
 
 APRIL FIRST 
 
 SUCH things as honour and love and faith are 
 not only nobler than food and drink, but 
 indeed I think we desire them more and sufter 
 more sharply for their absence. 
 
 A Lodging for the Night. 
 
 APRIL SECOND 
 
 An oath, so light a thing to swear, so grave a 
 
 thing to break : an oath, taken in the heat of 
 
 youth, repented with what sobbings of the heart, 
 
 but yet in vain repented, as the years go on : 
 
 an oath, that was once the very utterance of the 
 
 truth of God, but that falls to be the symbol of 
 
 a meaningless and empty slavery ; such is the 
 
 yoke that many young men joyfully assume, 
 
 and under whose dead weight they live to suftcr 
 
 worse than death. 
 
 The Spirited Old Lady. 
 
 APRIL THIRD 
 
 It seems as if marriage were the royal road 
 through life, and realised, on llic iiisiant, what wc 
 
 [ 3' J
 
 have all dreamed on summer Sundays when the 
 
 bells ring, or at night when we cannot sleep 
 
 for the desire of living. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 APRIL FOURTH 
 
 Most men, finding themselves the authors of 
 
 their own disgrace, rail the louder against God 
 
 or destiny. Most men, when they repent, 
 
 oblige their friends to share the bitterness of 
 
 that repentance. 
 
 Memories and Portraits. 
 
 APRIL FIFTH 
 
 It is a sore thing to have laboured long and 
 scaled the arduous hilltops, and when all is done, 
 find humanity indifi^erent to your achievement. 
 
 An Apology for Idlers. 
 
 APRIL SIXTH 
 
 The first duty of man is to speak ; that is his 
 
 chief business in this world ; and talk, which is 
 
 the harmonious speech of two or more, is by 
 
 far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs 
 
 nothing in money; it is all profit; it completes 
 
 our education, founds and fosters our friendships, 
 
 and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any 
 
 state of health. 
 
 Talk and Talkers. 
 
 [ 32 ]
 
 APRIL SEVENTH 
 
 Day by day we perfect ourselves in the art of 
 
 seeing nature more favourably. We learn to live 
 
 with her, as people learn to live with fretful or 
 
 violent spouses : to dwell lovingly on what is 
 
 good, and shut our eyes against all that is bleak 
 
 or inharmonious. 
 
 Unpleasant Places. 
 
 APRIL EIGHTH 
 
 It is the mark of a modest man to accept his 
 
 friendly circle ready-made from the hands of 
 
 opportunity. 
 
 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 
 
 APRIL NINTH 
 
 People who share a cell in the Bastille, or are 
 thrown together on an uninhabited isle, if they 
 do not immediately fall to fisticuffs, will find 
 some possible ground of compromise. They 
 will learn each other's ways and humours, so as 
 to know where they must go warily, and where 
 they may lean their whole weight. The discre- 
 tion of the first years becomes the settled habit 
 of the last-, and so, with wisdom and patience, 
 two lives may grow indissolubly into one. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 [ 33 ]
 
 APRIL TENTH 
 
 We do not go to cowards for tender dealing; 
 
 there is nothing so cruel as panic •■, the man who 
 
 has least fear for his own carcase, has most time 
 
 to consider others. 
 
 Aes Triplex. 
 
 APRIL ELEVENTH 
 
 I am not afraid of the truth, if any one could 
 tell it me, but I am afraid of parts of it imperti- 
 nently uttered. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 APRIL TWELFTH 
 
 Age asks with timidity to be spared intolerable 
 pain ; youth, taking fortune by the beard, de- 
 mands joy like a right. 
 
 The Dynamiter. 
 
 APRIL THIRTEENTH 
 
 The devil is only a very weak spirit before God's 
 truth, and all his subtleties vanish at a word of 
 true honour, like darkness at morning. 
 
 Neiv Arabian Nights. 
 
 APRIL FOURTEENTH 
 
 To love a character is only the heroic way of 
 understanding it. When we love, by some 
 noble method of our own or some nobility of 
 mien or nature in the other, we apprehend the 
 loved one by what is noblest in ourselves. 
 When we are merely studying an eccentricity, 
 
 [ 34 ]
 
 the method of our study is but a series of allow- 
 ances. To begin to understand is to begin to 
 sympathise; for comprehension comes only when 
 we have stated another's faults and virtues in 
 
 terms of our own. 
 
 The Story of a Lie. 
 
 APRIL FIFTEENTH 
 
 There is an obligation in happiness. 
 
 The Master of Eallantrae. 
 
 APRIL SIXTEENTH 
 
 Deeds are what I ask; kind deeds and words — 
 that 's the true-blue piety : to hope the best and 
 do the best, and speak the kindest. 
 
 Admiral Guinea. 
 
 APRIL SEVENTEENTH 
 O, to be up and doing, O 
 Unfearing and unashamed to go 
 In all the uproar and the press 
 About my human business ! 
 
 Our l.aJy of the Snoivs. 
 
 APRIL EIGHTEENTH 
 
 'I'o do anything because others do it, and not 
 because the thing is good, or kind, or honest in 
 its own right, is to resign all moral control ami 
 captaincy upon yourself, and go post-haste to 
 the devil with the greater niiinbcr. 
 
 Familinr StuJiis — Samuel Pefiys. 
 
 [ 35 ]
 
 APRIL NINETEENTH 
 
 When things fall out opportunely for the person 
 concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the 
 how or why, his own immediate personal con- 
 venience seeming a sufficient reason for the 
 strangest oddities and revolutions in our sub- 
 lunary things. 
 
 The Sire de MaLtroit" s Door. 
 
 APRIL TWENTIETH 
 
 We must not, in things temporal, take from 
 those who have little, the little that they have. 
 
 On Style in Literature. 
 
 APRIL TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 All the puling sorrows, all the carking repent- 
 ance, all this talk of duty that is no duty, in the 
 great peace, in the pure daylight of these woods, 
 
 fall away from you like a garment. 
 
 Forest Notes. 
 
 APRIL TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 Our right to live, to eat, to share in mankind's 
 pleasures, lies precisely in this : that we must be 
 persuaded we can on the whole live rather bene- 
 ficially than hurtfully to others. Remove this 
 persuasion, and the man has lost his right. 
 That persuasion is our dearest jewel, to which 
 
 [ 36 ]
 
 we must sacrifice the life itself to which it en- 
 titles us. P'or it is better to be dead than 
 
 degraded. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 APRIL TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 A new creed, like a new country, is an unhomely 
 place of sojourn ; but it makes men lean on one 
 another and join hands. 
 
 Familiar Studies — John Knox. 
 
 APRIL TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 I have always thought drunkenness a wild and 
 
 almost fearful pleasure, rather demoniacal than 
 
 human. 
 
 The Merry Men. 
 
 APRIL TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 All the world imagine they will be exceptional 
 when they grow wealthy ; but possession is 
 debasing, new desires spring up ; and the silly 
 taste for ostentation eats out the heart of pleasure. 
 
 The Treasure of Franchard. 
 
 APRIL TWENTY-SIXTH 
 
 The virtues we admire in the saint and the hero 
 are the fruits of a happy constitution. You, for 
 your part, must not think you will ever be a 
 good man, for these are born and ni)t made. 
 You will have your own reward, if you kic[) 
 
 [ 37 1
 
 on growing better than you were — how do I 
 say? — if you do not keep on growing worse. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 APRIL TWENTY-SEVENTH 
 
 The habitual liar may be a very honest fellow^ 
 
 and live truly with his wife and friends ; while 
 
 another man who never told a formal falsehood 
 
 in his life may yet be himself one lie — heart 
 
 and face, from top to bottom. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 APRIL TWENTY-EIGHTH 
 
 Man is an idle animal. He is at least as intel- 
 ligent as the ant ; but generations of advisers 
 have in vain recommended him the ant's 
 
 example. 
 
 The Day after To-morronu. 
 
 APRIL TWENTY-NINTH 
 
 Some thoughts, which sure would be the most 
 
 beautiful, vanish before we can rightly scan their 
 
 features ; as though a god, travelling by our 
 
 green highways, should but ope the door, give 
 
 one smiling look into the house, and go again 
 
 for ever. 
 
 The Country of the Camuards. 
 
 [ 38 ]
 
 APRIL THIRTIETH 
 
 Nothing is given for nothing in this world ; 
 there can be no true love, even on your own 
 side, without devotion ; devotion is the exercise 
 of love, by which it grows; but if you will give 
 enough of that, if you will pay the price in a 
 sufficient " amount of what you call life," why 
 then, indeed, whether with wife or comrade, you 
 may have months and even years of such easy, 
 natural, pleasurable, and yet improving inter- 
 course as shall make time a moment and kind- 
 ness a delight. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Thoreau. 
 
 [ 39 1
 
 .(^HP^. 
 
 MAY 
 
 MAY FIRST 
 
 IT is really very disheartening how we depend 
 on other people in this life. 
 
 the Silnjerado Squatters. 
 
 MAY SECOND 
 
 It is not well to think of death, unless we temper 
 
 the thought with that of heroes who despised it. 
 
 Upon what ground, is of small account; it it 
 
 be only the bishop who was burned for his faith 
 
 in the antipodes, his memory lightens the heart 
 
 and makes us walk undisturbed among graves. 
 
 And so the martyrs' monument is a wholcsonu-, 
 
 heartsome spot in the field of the dead ; and as 
 
 we look upon it, a brave influence comes to us 
 
 from the land of those who have won their 
 
 discharge and, in another phrase of Patrick 
 
 Walker's, got "cleanly oft" the stage." 
 
 Grcjjriars. 
 
 MAY THIRD 
 
 Those wlio can avoid toil altogether am! (Kvrll 
 in the Arcadia of private means, and even those 
 
 L 4' I
 
 who can, by abstinence, reduce the necessary 
 
 amount of it to some six weeks a year, having 
 
 the more hberty, have only the higher moral 
 
 obligation to be up and doing in the interest 
 
 of man. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Thoreau. 
 
 MAY FOURTH 
 
 Sin, my dear young friend, sin is the sole calam- 
 ity that a wise man should apprehend. 
 
 Fable of the Yello^w Paint. 
 
 MAY FIFTH 
 
 We all have by our bedsides the box of the 
 Merchant Abudah, thank God, securely enough 
 shut ; but when a young man sacrifices sleep to 
 labour, let him have a care, for he is playing with 
 
 the lock. 
 
 Some College Memories. 
 
 MAY SIXTH 
 
 The purely wise are silenced by facts ; they talk 
 in a clear atmosphere, problems lying around 
 them like a view in nature; if thev can be 
 shown to be somewhat in the wrong, they digest 
 the reproof like a thrashing, and make better 
 
 intellectual blood. 
 
 Talk and Talkers. 
 
 [ 42 ]
 
 MAY SEVENTH 
 
 A certain sort of talent is almost indispensable 
 for people who would spend years together and 
 not bore themselves to death. But the talent, 
 like the agreement, must be for and about life. 
 To dwell happily together, they should be versed 
 in the niceties of the heart, and born with a 
 faculty for willing compromise. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 MAY EIGHTH 
 
 In every part and corner of our life, to lose 
 oneself is to be gainer ; to forget oneself is to 
 be happy. 
 
 Old Mortality. 
 
 MAY NINTH 
 
 Life is only a very dull and ill-directed theatre 
 unless we have some interests in the piece; and 
 to those who have neither art nor science, the 
 world is a mere arrangement of colours, or a 
 rough footway where they may very well break 
 their shins. 
 
 El Dorado. 
 
 MAY TENTH 
 
 The ignorance of your middle class surprises 
 mc. Outside itself, it thinks the world Ui lie 
 «|uitc ignorant and c(]ual, sunk in a common 
 degradation; hut to the eye of the (jbbcivcr, 
 
 [ 43 J
 
 all ranks are seen to stand in ordered hierarchies, 
 
 and each adorned with its particular aptitudes and 
 
 knowledge. 
 
 Iht Dynamiter. 
 
 MAY ELEVENTH 
 
 When it comes to be a question of each man 
 
 doing his own share or the rest doing more, 
 
 prettiness of sentiment will be forgotten. To 
 
 dock the skulker's food is not enough ; many 
 
 will rather eat haws and starve on petty pilfer- 
 
 ings than put their shoulder to the wheel for 
 
 one hour daily. 
 
 the Day after To-morroiv. 
 
 MAY TWELFTH 
 
 There is not a juncture in to-day's affairs but 
 some useful word may yet be said of it. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 MAY THIRTEENTH 
 
 In this mixed world, if you can find one or two 
 
 sensible places in a man ; above all, if you should 
 
 find a whole family living together on such 
 
 pleasant terms, you may surely be satisfied, and 
 
 take the rest for granted ; or, what is a great 
 
 deal better, boldly make up your mind that you 
 
 can do perfectly well without the rest, and that 
 
 ten thousand bad traits cannot make a single 
 
 good one any the less good. 
 
 Font-sur-Sambre. 
 
 [ 44 ]
 
 MAY FOURTEENTH 
 
 Whether people's gratitude for the good gifts 
 that come to them be wisely conceived or duti- 
 fully expressed is a secondary matter, after all, 
 so long as they feel gratitude. 
 
 DoTvn the Oise. 
 
 MAY FIFTEENTH 
 
 Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; 
 but in the open world it passes lightly, with its 
 stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are 
 marked by changes in the face of nature. 
 
 Tra'vels ivitA a Donkey. 
 
 MAY SIXTEENTH 
 
 I have never thought it easy to be just, and find 
 it daily even harder than I thought. 
 
 The Country of the Camisards. 
 
 MAY SEVENTEENTH 
 
 We all suffer ourselves to he too much con- 
 cerned about a little poverty j but such considera- 
 tions should not move us In the choice of that 
 which is to be the business and justification of 
 so great a portion of our lives; and like the 
 missionary, the patriot, or the philosopher, we 
 should all choose that poor and brave career in 
 which we can Ao the most and best for niankind. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 \ 45 1
 
 MAY EIGHTEENTH 
 
 The seductions of life are strong in every age 
 and station ; we make idols of our afl-ections, 
 idols of our customary virtues; we are content 
 to avoid the inconvenient wrong and to forego 
 the inconvenient right with almost equal self- 
 approval, until at last we make a home for our 
 conscience among the negative virtues and the 
 
 cowardly vices. 
 
 By-ways of Book Illustration. 
 
 MAY NINETEENTH 
 
 This is one of the lessons of travel — that some 
 
 of the strangest races dwell next door to you at 
 
 home. 
 
 Across the Plains. 
 
 MAY TWENTIETH 
 
 It is salutary to get out of ourselves and see 
 
 people living together in perfect unconsciousness 
 
 of our existence, as they will live when we arc 
 
 gone. 
 
 An Autumn Effect. 
 
 MAY TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 The ways of men seem always very trivial to us 
 when wc find ourselves alone on a church top, 
 with the blue sky and a icw tall pinnacles, and 
 see far below us the steep roofs and foreshort- 
 ened buttresses, and the silent activity of the 
 
 city streets. 
 
 Unpleasmit Places. 
 
 [ 46 1
 
 MAY TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 It is easy to be virtuous when one's own con- 
 venience is not affected ; and it is no shame to 
 any man to follow the advice of an outsider who 
 owns that, while he sees which is the better part, 
 he might not have the courage to profit himself 
 
 by this opinion. 
 
 To the Clergy. 
 
 MAY TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 Here we have no continuing city ; and as for 
 
 the eternal, it 's a comfortable thought that we 
 
 have other merits than our own. 
 
 Prince Errant. 
 
 MAY TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 When we discover that we can be no lonsrer 
 true, the next best is to be kind. 
 
 Some Aspects of Robert Burns. 
 
 MAY TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 The Lord is Lord of misiht : 
 In deeds, in deeds, he takes delight ; 
 The plough, the spear, the laden barks 
 The field, the founded city, marks; 
 He marks the smiler of the streets, 
 The singer upon garden scats; 
 He sees the climber in the rocks: 
 I'o him the shepherd folds iiis flocks. 
 
 Our Lady of the SnoiMs. 
 
 [ 47 ]
 
 MAY TWENTY-SIXTH 
 
 Love, like the shadow of a great rock, should 
 lend shelter and refreshment, not to the lover 
 only, but to his mistress and to the children that 
 reward them ; and their very friends should seek 
 repose in the fringes of that peace. 
 
 Of Lo've and Politics. 
 
 MAY TWENTY-SEVENTH 
 
 All have some fault. The fault of each grinds 
 
 down the hearts of those about him, and — let 
 
 us not blink the truth — hurries both him and 
 
 them into the grave. 
 
 Preface to Familiar Studies. 
 
 MAY TWENTY-EIGHTH 
 
 We sin, I dare not say by His temptation, but 
 I must say with His consent ; and to any but 
 the brutish man his sins are the beginning of 
 
 wisdom. 
 
 The Merry Men. 
 
 MAY TWENTY-NINTH 
 
 We are told by men of science that all the 
 ventures of mariners on the sea, all that counter- 
 marching of tribes and races that confounds old 
 history with its dust and rumour, sprang from 
 nothing more abstruse than the laws of supply 
 and demand, and a certain natural instinct for 
 
 cheap rations. 
 
 Will o' the Mill. 
 
 \ 48 ]
 
 MAY THIRTIETH 
 
 Justice is but an earthly currency, paid to 
 appearances ; you may see another superticially 
 righted ; but be sure he has got too little or too 
 much; and in your own case rest content with 
 what is paid you. It is more just than you sup- 
 pose ; that your \irtues are misunderstood is a 
 price you pay to keep your meannesses concealed. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 MAY THIRTY-FIRST 
 
 The unattainable is not truly unattainable when 
 we can make the beauty of it our own. 
 
 Lord Ljtton s Fables. 
 
 f 49
 
 JUNE 
 
 JUNE FIRST 
 
 '' I ""O the gratitude that becomes us in this life, 
 -^ I can set no limit. Though we steer after 
 a fashion, yet we must sail according to the winds 
 and currents. After what I have done, what 
 might 1 not have done ? That I have still the 
 courage to attempt my life, that I am not now 
 overladen with dishonours, to whom do I owe 
 it but to the gentle ordering of circumstances in 
 the great design ? More has not been done to 
 me than I can bear ; I have been marvellously 
 restrained and helped : not unto us, O Lord ! 
 
 Gratitude to God. 
 
 JUNE SECOND 
 
 A man must not deny his manifest abilities, for 
 that is to evade his obligations. 
 
 The Treasure of Franchard. 
 
 JUNE THIRD 
 
 The man of very regular conduct is too often a 
 prig, if he he not worse — a rabbi. I, for my 
 part, want to be startled out of my conceits j I 
 
 [ 51 J
 
 want to be put to shame in my own eyes ; I 
 want to feel the liriille in my mouth, and he con- 
 tinually reminded of my own weakness and the 
 omnipotence of circumstances. 
 
 Rejiectiom and Remarks. 
 
 JUNE FOURTH 
 
 Honour is a diamond cut in a thousand facets, 
 
 and with the true iire in each. 
 
 Beau Austin. 
 
 JUNE FIFTH 
 
 Those he approves that ply the trade, 
 That rock the child, that wed the maid, 
 That with weak virtues, weaker hands, 
 Sow gladness on the peopled lands, 
 And still with laughter, song, and shout. 
 Spin the great wheel of earth about. 
 
 Our Lady of the Sjio^ws. 
 
 JUNE SIXTH 
 
 It is all very fine to talk about tramps and 
 
 morality. ... As long as you keep in the 
 
 upper regions, with all the world bowing to 
 
 you as you go, social arrangements have a very 
 
 handsome air \ but once get under the wheels 
 
 and you wish society were at the devil. I will 
 
 give most respectable men a fortnight of such a 
 
 life, and then I will offer them twopence for 
 
 what remains of their morality. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 [ 52 ]
 
 JUNE SEVENTH 
 
 The best that we find in our travels is an honest 
 friend. He is a fortunate voyager who finds 
 manv. \Ve travel, indeed, to find them. They 
 are the end and the reward of life. They keep 
 us worthy of ourselves ; and when we are alone, 
 we are only nearer to the absent. 
 
 Litters to Sydney Col-vin. 
 
 JUNE EIGHTH 
 
 We like to have, in our great men, something 
 that is above question ; we like to place an 
 implicit faith in them, and see them always on 
 the platform of their greatness. 
 
 yictor Hugo" s Romances. 
 
 JUNE NINTH 
 
 Outdoor rustic people have not many ideas, but 
 such as they have are hardy plants and thrive 
 flourishingly in persecution. (}nc who has 
 grown a long while in the sweat of laborious 
 noons, and under the stars at night, a frcciucntcr 
 of hills and forests, an old honest countryman, 
 has, in the end, a sense of communion with 
 the powers of the universe, and amicable rela- 
 tions towards his God. 
 
 Tra-vels avit/i a Donkey. 
 
 [ 53 ]
 
 JUNE TENTH 
 
 We do our good and bad with a high hand and 
 ahnost offensively ; and make even our ahiis 
 a witness-bearing and an act of war against 
 
 the wrono;. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 JUNE ELEVENTH 
 
 We may be unjust, but when a man despises 
 commerce and philanthropy alike, and has views 
 of good so soaring that he must take himself 
 apart from mankind for their cultivation, we 
 will not be content without some striking act. 
 
 Fatniliar Studies — Thoreau. 
 
 JUNE TWELFTH 
 
 The journalist is not reckoned an important 
 
 officer; yet judge of the good he might do, by 
 
 the harm he does. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 JUNE THIRTEENTH 
 
 The spice of life is battle; the friendliest rela- 
 tions are still a kind of contest; and if we 
 would not forego all that is valuable in our lot, 
 we must continually face some other person, 
 eye to eye, and wrestle a fall whether in love 
 
 or enmity. 
 
 'Talk and Talkers. 
 
 [ 54 ]
 
 JUNE FOURTEENTH 
 
 We shall always shock each other both in life 
 
 and art ; we cannot get the sun into our pictures, 
 
 nor the abstract right (if there be such a 
 
 thing) into our books; enough if, in the one, 
 
 there glimmer some hint of the great light that 
 
 blinds us from heaven; enough, if, on the other, 
 
 there shine, even upon foul details, a spirit at 
 
 magnanimity. 
 
 Memories and Portraits. 
 
 JUNE FIFTEENTH 
 
 The best of men and the best of women may 
 sometimes live together all their lives, and for 
 want of some consent on fundamental questions, 
 hold each other lost spirits to the end. 
 
 Virginibus Fuerisque. 
 
 JUNE SIXTEENTH 
 
 Most of our pocket wisdom is conceived for the 
 
 use of mediocre people, to discourage them from 
 
 ambitious attempts, and generally console them 
 
 in their mediocrity. 
 
 Crabbed Age and Youth. 
 
 JUNE SEVENTEENTH 
 
 Idleness so called, which docs not consist in 
 doing nothing, hut in doing a great deal not 
 recognised in the dogmatic formularies of the 
 
 L 55 J
 
 ruling class, has as good a right to state its 
 
 position as industry itself. 
 
 An Apolo^ for Idlers. 
 
 JUNE EIGHTEENTH 
 
 No man can find out the world, says Solomon, 
 from bctiinnini!; to end, because the world is in 
 his heart ; and so it is impossible for any of us 
 to understand, from beginning to end, that agree- 
 ment of harmonious circumstmces that creates 
 in us the highest pleasure of admiration, pre- 
 cisely because some of these circumstances are 
 hidden from us for ever in the constitution of 
 
 our own bodies. 
 
 Ordered South. 
 
 JUNE NINETEENTH 
 
 People usually do things and suffer martyrdoms, 
 because they have an inclination that way. 
 
 The English Admirals. 
 
 JUNE TWENTIETH 
 
 There arc two reasons for the choice of any 
 
 way of life : the first is inbred taste in the 
 
 chooser; the second some high utility in the 
 
 industry selected. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 [ 56 ]
 
 JUNE TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 To sit still and contemplate, — to remember the 
 
 faces of women without desire, to be pleased by 
 
 the great deeds of men without envy, to be 
 
 everything and everywhere in sympathy, and 
 
 yet content to remain where and what you are 
 
 — is not this to know both wisdom and virtue, 
 
 and to dwell with happiness? After all, it is 
 
 not they who carry flags, but they who look 
 
 upon it from a private chamber, who have the 
 
 fun of the procession. 
 
 JValking Tours. 
 
 JUNE TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 There 's such a thing as a man being pious and 
 
 honest in the private way ; and there is such a 
 
 thing, sir, as a public virtue; but when a man 
 
 has neither, the Lord lighten him ! 
 
 Prince Errant. 
 
 JUNE TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 The average man lives, and must live, so wholly 
 in convention, that gunpowder charges of the 
 truth are more apt to discompose than to in- 
 vigorate his creed. 
 
 Books avhich finue InflucnccJ me. 
 
 JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 Ik-ttcr that our serene temples were deserted 
 than filled with trafficking and juggling priests. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 1 57 1
 
 JUNE TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 The character of a place is often most perfectly 
 expressed in its associations. An event strikes 
 root and grows into a legend, when it has hap- 
 pened amongst congenial surroundings. Llgly 
 actions, above all in ugly places, have the true 
 romantic quality, and become an undying prop- 
 erty of their scene. 
 
 Legends. 
 
 JUNE TWENTY-SIXTH 
 
 So long as men do their duty, even if it be 
 
 greatly in a misapprehension, they will be leading 
 
 pattern lives ; and whether or not they come to 
 
 lie beside a martyrs' monument, we may be sure 
 
 they will find a safe haven somewhere in the 
 
 providence of God. 
 
 Greyfriars. 
 
 JUNE TWENTY-SEVENTH 
 
 You have perhaps only one friend in the world 
 in whose esteem it is worth while for you to 
 right yourself. Justification to indifferent per- 
 sons is, at best, an impertinent intrusion. Let 
 them think what they please; they will be the 
 more likely to forgive you in the end. 
 
 Refltctions and Remarks. 
 
 L 58 ]
 
 JUNE TWENTY-EIGHTH 
 
 There is a duty to the living more important 
 than any charity to the dead. 
 
 JForks of Eiigar Allan Foe. 
 
 JUNE TWENTY-NINTH 
 
 There are strange depths of idleness in man, a 
 too-easily-got sufficiency, as in the case of the 
 sago-eaters, often quenching the desire for all 
 besides ; and it is possible that the men of the 
 richest ant-heaps may sink even into squalor. 
 
 T/ie Day after To-morro^w. 
 
 JUNE THIRTIETH 
 
 I am not so blind but that I know I might be a 
 murderer or even a traitor to-morrow; and now, 
 as if I were not already too feelingly alive to my 
 misdeeds, I must choose out the one person 
 whom I most desire to please, and make her the 
 daily witness of my failures, I must give a part 
 in all my dishonours to the one person who can 
 feel them more keenly than myself. In all our 
 daring, magnanimous human way of lite, I linil 
 nothing more bold than this. To go into battle 
 is but a small thing by comparison. It is the last 
 act of committal. After that, there is no way 
 left, not even suicide, but to be a g(n)d man. 
 
 Kejleclioiis and Rmmrhs. 
 
 59
 
 JULY 
 
 JULY FIRST 
 
 THIS world in itself is but a painful and 
 uneasy place of residence, and lasting 
 happiness, at least to the self-conscious, comes 
 
 only from within. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Thoreau. 
 
 JULY SECOND 
 
 The farmer's life is natural and simple; but the 
 prince's is both artificial and complicated. Jt is 
 easy to do right in the one, and exceedingly 
 difficult not to do wrong in the other. If your 
 crop is blighted, you can take ofl your bonnet 
 and say, " God's will be done ; " but if the 
 prince meets with a reverse, he may have to 
 blame himself for the attempt. And perhaps, 
 if all the kings in Europe were to confine them- 
 selves to innocent amusement, the subjects would 
 be the better off. 
 
 Prince Errant. 
 
 [ 6l ]
 
 JULY THIRD 
 
 Out of the strong comes forth sweetness; but 
 an ill thing poorly done is an ill thing top and 
 
 bottom. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 JULY FOURTH 
 
 Any man can see ahd understand a picture ; it is 
 
 reserved for the few to separate anything out of 
 
 the confusion of nature, and see that distinctly 
 
 and with intelligence. 
 
 An Autumn Effect. 
 
 JULY FIFTH 
 
 The future is nothing ; but the past is myself, 
 my own history, the seed of my present thoughts, 
 the mould of my present disposition. It is not 
 in vain that I return to the nothings of my 
 childhood ; for every one of them has left some 
 stamp upon me or put some fetter on my 
 boasted free-will. In the past is my present 
 fate J and in the past also is my real life. 
 
 A Retrospect. 
 
 JULY SIXTH 
 
 The forest is by itself, and forest life owns small 
 kinship with life in the dismal land of labour. 
 Men are so far sophisticated that they cannot 
 take the world as it is given to them by the 
 sight of their eyes. Not only what they see 
 
 [ 62 ]
 
 and hear, but what they know to be behind, 
 
 enter into their notion of a place. 
 
 Forest Notes. 
 
 JULY SEVENTH 
 
 A time comes for all men when the helm is 
 
 taken out of their hands. 
 
 mil o' the Mill. 
 
 JULY EIGHTH 
 
 For my part, I am body and soul with the 
 
 women ; and after a well-married couple, there 
 
 is nothing so beautiful in the world as the myth 
 
 of the divine huntress. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 JULY NINTH 
 
 It is not easy to say who know the Lord ; and it 
 is none of our business. Protestants and Cath- 
 olics, and even those who worship stones, may 
 know Him and be known of Him; for He has 
 
 made all. 
 
 The Country of the CamisarJs. 
 
 JULY TENTH 
 
 There is no friendship so noble, but it is the 
 product of time ; and a world of little finical ob- 
 servances, and little frail proprieties and fashions 
 of the hcnir, go to make or to mar, to stint or to 
 perfect, the union (»f spirits the most loving and 
 the most intolerant of such interference. 
 
 Familiar Studies — John Knox. 
 
 L ^3 1
 
 JULY ELEVENTH 
 
 What seems a kind of temporal death to people 
 choked between walls and curtains, is only a light 
 and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield. 
 
 Travels ivit/i a Donkey. 
 
 JULY TWELFTH 
 
 Alas ! I fear every man and woman of us is 
 "greatly dark" to all their neighbours, from the 
 day of birth until death removes them, in their 
 greatest virtues as well as in their saddest faults. 
 
 Some Aspects of Robert Burns. 
 
 JULY THIRTEENTH 
 
 No measure comes before Parliament but it has 
 been long ago prepared by the grand jury of the 
 talkers; no book is written that has not been 
 largely composed by their assistance. 
 
 Talk and Talkers. 
 
 JULY FOURTEENTH 
 
 That people should laugh over the same sort of 
 jests, and have many a story of "grouse in the 
 gun room," many an old joke between them 
 which time cannot wither nor custom stale, is a 
 better preparation for life, by your leave, than 
 many other things higher and better sounding 
 in the world's ears. You could read Kant by 
 
 [ 64 ]
 
 yourself, if you wanted ; but you must share 
 
 a joke with some one else. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 JULY FIFTEENTH 
 
 All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions 
 
 of youth ; and none, or almost none, for the 
 
 disenchantments of age. 
 
 Crabbed Age and Youth. 
 
 JULY SLXTEENTH 
 
 An inquiry must be in some acknowledged direc- 
 tion, with a name to go by ; or else you are not 
 inquiring at all, only lounging; and the work- 
 house is too good for you. 
 
 An Apology for Idlers. 
 
 JULY SEVENTEENTH 
 
 We admire splendid views and great pictures ; 
 
 and yet what is truly admirable is rather the 
 
 mind within us, that gathers together these 
 
 scattered details for its delight, and makes out of 
 
 certain colours, certain distributions of graduated 
 
 liirht and darkness, that intclliLrible whole which 
 
 alone we call a picture or a view. 
 
 Ordered South. 
 
 JULY EIGHTEEN TFI 
 
 A man should be ashamed to take his food if he 
 
 has not alchemy enough in his stomach to turn 
 
 Stjmc of it into intense and enjoyable occupation. 
 
 Familiar Studies — IVult IVhilman. 
 
 [ ^5 ]
 
 JULY NINETEENTH 
 
 Discomfort, when it is honestly uncomfortable 
 and makes no nauseous pretensions to the con- 
 trary, is a vastly humorous business; and people 
 well steeped and stupefied in the open air are in 
 
 a good vein for laughter. 
 
 Inland Voyage. 
 
 JULY TWENTIETH 
 
 Shut your eyes hard against the recollection of 
 
 your sins. Do not be afraid, you will not be 
 
 able to forget them. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 JULY TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 Now, what I like so much in France is the clear, 
 
 unflinching recognition by everybody of his own 
 
 luck. They all know on which side their bread 
 
 is buttered, and take a pleasure in showing it to 
 
 others, which is surely the better part of religion. 
 
 And they scorn to make a poor mouth over their 
 
 poverty, which I take to be the better part of 
 
 manliness. 
 
 Sambre and Oise Canal. 
 
 JULY TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 I could never fathom how a man dares. to lift up 
 his voice to preach in a cathedral. What is he 
 to say that will not be an anti-climax ? For 
 though I have heard a considerable variety of 
 sermons, I never yet heard one that was so 
 
 [ 66 ]
 
 expressive as a cathedral. . . . Like all good 
 
 preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself, — 
 
 and every man is his own doctor of divinity in 
 
 the last resort. 
 
 Noyon Cathedral. 
 
 JULY TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 Leave not, my soul, the unfoughten field, nor 
 
 leave 
 Thy debts dishonoured, nor thy place desert 
 Without due service rendered. 
 
 Underivoods. 
 
 JULY TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 It is through our affections that we are smitten 
 with the true pain, even the pain that kills. 
 
 Admiral Guinea. 
 
 JULY TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 Whatever keeps a man in the front garden, 
 whatever checks wandering fancy and all inor- 
 dinate ambition, whatever makes for lounging 
 and contentment, makes just so surely for 
 
 domestic happiness. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 JULY TWENTY-SIXTH 
 
 There can be nr) fairer ambition than to excel 
 in talk ; to be affable, gay, ready, clear, and wel- 
 come ; to have a fact, a thought, or an illustration, 
 pat to every subject ; and not only to chtc r the 
 flight of time among our intimates, but bear our 
 
 t 67 ]
 
 part in that great international congress, always 
 sitting, where public wrongs are first declared, 
 public errors first corrected, and the course of 
 public opinion shaped, day by day, a little nearer 
 
 to the ri<i;ht. 
 
 Talk and Talkers. 
 
 JULY TWENTY-SEVENTH 
 
 The gift of reading, as I have called it, is not 
 very common, nor very generally understood. 
 It consists, first of all, in a vast intellectual en- 
 dowment — a free grace, I find I must call it — 
 by which a man rises to understand that he is 
 not punctually right, nor those from whom he 
 differs absolutely wrong. 
 
 Books njuhich hanje Influenced me, 
 
 JULY TWENTY-EIGHTH 
 
 Good food, honest wine, a grateful conscience, 
 and a little pleasant chat before a man retires, are 
 worth all the possets and apothecary's drugs. 
 
 Prince Errant. 
 
 JULY TWENTY-NINTH 
 
 Waiting is good hunting, and when the teeth are 
 
 shut the tongue is at home. 
 
 Fable of the Touchstone. 
 
 [ 68 ]
 
 JULY THIRTIETH 
 
 The love of parents for their children is, of all 
 natural affections, the most ill-starred. It is not 
 a love for the person, since it begins before the 
 person has come into the world, and founds on 
 an imaginary character and looks. Thus it is 
 foredoomed to disappointment ; and because the 
 parent either looks for too much, or at least for 
 something inappropriate, at his offsprings' hands, 
 it is too often insufficiently repaid. The natural 
 bond, besides, is stronger from parent to child 
 than from child to parent ; and it is the side 
 which confers benefits, not which receives them, 
 that thinks most of a relation. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 JULY THIRTY-FIRST 
 
 I would not willingly have to do with even a 
 
 police constable in any other spirit than that of 
 
 kindness. 
 
 The Day after To-morroav. 
 
 [ 69 1
 
 AUGUST 
 
 AUGUST FIRST 
 
 IT is a difficult matter to make the most of any 
 given place, and we have much in our own 
 power. Things looked at patiently from one 
 side after another generally end by showing a 
 
 side that is beautiful. 
 
 Unpleasant Places. 
 
 AUGUST SECOND 
 
 Dilettante is now a term of reproach ; but there 
 is a certain form of dilettantism to which no one 
 can object. It is this that we want among our 
 students. We wish them to abandon no sub- 
 ject until they have seen and felt its merit — 
 to act under a general interest in all branches of 
 knowledge, not a commercial eagerness to excel 
 
 in one. 
 
 The Modern Student. 
 
 AUGUST THIRD 
 
 It is to be hoped that a numerous and enterpris- 
 ing generation of writers will follow and surpass 
 the present one i bm it would be better if the 
 
 L 7- J
 
 stream were stayed, and the roll of our old, 
 
 honest, English books were closed, than that 
 
 esurient bookmakers should continue to debase 
 
 a brave tradition and lower, in their own eyes, 
 
 a famous race. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 AUGUST FOURTH 
 
 There is a day appointed for all when they shall 
 turn again upon their own philosophy. 
 
 Of Lo've and Politics. 
 
 AUGUST FIFTH 
 
 Life is a business we are all apt to mismanage; 
 either living recklessly from day to day, or 
 suffering ourselves to be gulled out of our 
 moments by the inanities of custom. We 
 should despise a man who gave as little activity 
 and forethought to the conduct of any other 
 business. But in this, which is the one thing 
 of all others, since it contains them all, we 
 cannot see the forest for the trees. . 
 
 Familiar Studies — IValt Whitman. 
 
 AUGUST SIXTH 
 
 People connected with literature and philosophy 
 are busy all their days in getting rid of second- 
 hand notions and false standards. It is their 
 profession, in the sweat of their brows, by 
 dogged thiiiking, to recover their old fresh view 
 
 [ 72 ]
 
 of life, and distinguish what they really and 
 
 originally like from what they have only learned 
 
 to tolerate perforce. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 AUGUST SEVENTH 
 
 It is a good rule to be on your guard wherever 
 
 you hear great professions about a very little 
 
 piece of virtue. 
 
 Do-wn the Oise. 
 
 AUGUST EIGHTH 
 
 Charity begins blindfold ; and only through a 
 series of similar misapprehensions rises at length 
 into a settled principle of love and patience, and 
 a firm belief in all our fellow-men. 
 
 Tra'vels njuith a Donkey. 
 
 AUGUST NINTH 
 
 The positive virtues are imperfect ; thev are 
 even ugly in their imperfection : for man's acts, 
 by the necessity of his being, arc coarse and 
 mingled. The kindest, in the course of a day of 
 active kindnesses, will say some things rudely, 
 and do some things cruelly; the most honour- 
 able, perhaps, trembles at his nearness to a doubt- 
 ful act. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 [ 73 1
 
 AUGUST TENTH 
 
 Though we should be grateful for good houses, 
 there is, after all, no house like God's out-of- 
 doors. And lastly, sir, it quiets a man down like 
 
 saying his prayers. 
 
 Prince Errant. 
 
 AUGUST ELEVENTH 
 
 To conceal a sentiment, if you are sure you 
 hold it, is to take a liberty with truth. There 
 is probably no point of view possible to a sane 
 man but contains some truth and, in the true 
 connection, might be profitable to the race. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 AUGUST TWELFTH 
 
 Literature in many of its branches is no other 
 
 than the shadow of good talk ; but the imitation 
 
 falls far short of the original in life, freedom, and 
 
 effect. 
 
 Talk and Talkers, 
 
 AUGUST THIRTEENTH 
 
 It is more important that a person should be a 
 good gossip, and talk pleasantly and smartly of 
 common friends and the thousand and one 
 nothings of the day and hour, than that she 
 should speak with the tongues of men and 
 angels; for a while together by the fire, happens 
 
 [ 74 ]
 
 more frequently in marriage than the presence 
 of a distinguished foreigner to dinner. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 AUGUST FOURTEENTH 
 
 Our affections and beliefs are wiser than we; 
 the best that is in us is better than we can 
 understand; for it is grounded beyond experi- 
 ence, and guides us, blindfold, but safe, from 
 one age on to another. 
 
 Letter to IVilliam Ernest Henley. 
 
 AUGUST FIFTEENTH 
 
 The study of conduct has to do with grave 
 problems; not every action should be higgled 
 over; one of the leading virtues therein is to let 
 oneself alone. But if you make it your chief 
 employment, you are sure to meddle too much. 
 
 Rejlections and Remarks. 
 
 AUGUST SIXTEENTH 
 
 All opinions, properly so called, are stages on the 
 road to truth. It does not follow that a man 
 will travel any further ; but if he has really con- 
 sidered the world and drawn a conclusion, he 
 
 has travelled as far. 
 
 Crabbed Age and y'outft. 
 
 [ 75 ]
 
 AUGUST SEVENTEENTH 
 
 There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge 
 to be found upon the summits of formal and 
 laborious science; but it is all round about you, 
 and for the trouble of looking, that you will 
 acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life. 
 
 An Apology for Idlers. 
 
 AUGUST EIGHTEENTH 
 
 An aspiration is a joy for ever, a possession as 
 
 solid as a landed estate, a fortune which we can 
 
 never exhaust and which gives us year by year a 
 
 revenue of pleasurable activity. To have many 
 
 of these is to be spiritually rich. 
 
 El Dorado. 
 
 AUGUST NINETEENTH 
 
 The child, the seed, the grain of corn, 
 
 The acorn on the hill. 
 
 Each for some separate end is born 
 
 In season fit, and still 
 
 Each must in strength arise to work 
 
 The almighty will. 
 
 Vnderiuoods. 
 
 AUGUST TWENTIETH 
 
 Education, philosophers are agreed, is the most 
 philosophical of duties. 
 
 The. Treasure of Tranchard. 
 
 [ 7^ ]
 
 AUGUST TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 Let my life, then, flow like common lives, each 
 
 pain rewarded with some pleasure, some pleasure 
 
 linked with some pain : nothing pure whether 
 
 for good or evil : and my husband, like myself, 
 
 and all the rest of us, only a poor kind-hearted 
 
 sinner, striving for the better part. What more 
 
 could any woman ask ? 
 
 Admiral Guinea. 
 
 AUGUST TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 The self-made man is the funniest wind-bag 
 
 after all ! There is a marked difference between 
 
 decreeing light in chaos, and lighting the gas in 
 
 a metropolitan back-parlor with a box of patent 
 
 matches ; and, do what we will, there is always 
 
 something made to our hand, if it were only 
 
 our fingers. 
 
 Do'Tvn t/ie Oise. 
 
 AUGUST TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 \im can forgive people who do not follow you 
 through a philosophical disquisition; but to liiul 
 your wife laughing when you had tears in )'cjur 
 eyes, or staring when you were in a iit ot 
 laughter, would go some way towards a dissolu- 
 tion of the marriage. 
 
 yirginihus Puirisqtie. 
 
 [-7]
 
 AUGUST TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 Each man should learn what is within him, that 
 he may strive to mendj he must be taught what is 
 without him, that he may be kind to others. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 AUGUST TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 We must all work for the sake of work ; we 
 must all work, as Thorcau says again, in any 
 *' absorbing pursuit — it does not much matter 
 what, so it be honest ; " but the most profitable 
 work is that which combines into one continued 
 effort the largest proportion of the powers and 
 desires of a man's nature ; that into which he 
 will plunge with ardour, and from which he will 
 desist with reluctance ; in which he will know 
 the weariness of fatigue, but not that of satiety ; 
 and which will be ever fresh, pleasing, and stimu- 
 lating to his taste. Such work holds a man 
 together, braced at all points ; it does not suffer 
 him to doze or wander; it keeps him actively 
 conscious of himself, yet raised among superior 
 interests ; it gives him the profit of industry with 
 the pleasures of a pastime. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Thoreau. 
 
 AUGUST TWENTY-SIXTH 
 
 We are all for tootling on the sentimental flute 
 in literature; and not a man among us will go 
 
 [ 78 ]
 
 to the head of the march to sound the heady 
 
 drums. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 AUGUST TWENTY-SEVENTH 
 
 A clean shrift makes simple living. 
 
 Will o' the Mill. 
 
 AUGUST TWENTY-EIGHTH 
 
 If we find but one to whom we can speak out 
 
 of our heart freely, with whom we can walk in 
 
 love and simplicity without dissimulation, we 
 
 have no ground of quarrel with the world or 
 
 God. 
 
 The Country of the Camisards. 
 
 AUGUST TWENTY-NINTH 
 
 Our judgments are based upon two things: 
 first, upon the original preferences of our soul; 
 but second, upon the mass of testimony to the 
 nature of God, man, and the universe which 
 reaches us, in divers manners, from without. 
 ■ For the most part these divers manners arc re- 
 ducible to one, all that we learn of past times 
 and much that we learn of our own reaching us 
 through the medium of books or papers, and 
 even he who cannot read learning from the same 
 source at second-hand and by the report of him 
 
 who can. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 [ 79 J
 
 AUGUST THIRTIETH 
 
 Satire, the angry picture of human faults, is not 
 great art ; we can all be angry with our neigh- 
 bour ; what we want is to be shown, not his 
 defects, of which we are too conscious, but his 
 merits, to which we are too blind. 
 
 Books ^wh'tch hanje Influenced me. 
 
 AUGUST THIRTY-FIRST 
 
 A great part of this life consists in contemplating 
 what we cannot cure. 
 
 The Master of Ballantrae. 
 
 [ 80 ]
 
 SEPTEMBER 
 
 SEPTEMBER FIRST 
 
 T70RTUNE turns the wheel. They say she 
 
 -*- is blind, but we will hope she only sees a 
 
 little farther on. 
 
 Prince Errant. 
 
 SEPTEMBER SECOND 
 
 It is only with a few rare natures that friendship 
 is added to friendship, love to love, and the man 
 keeps growing richer in affection - — richer, I 
 mean, as a bank may be said to grow richer, both 
 giving and receiving more — after his head is 
 white and his back weary, and he prepares to 
 go down into the dust of death. 
 
 Familiar Studies — John Knox. 
 
 SEPTEMBER THIRD 
 
 I cannot forgive God for the sufferings of 
 others; when I look abroad upon his world and 
 behold its cruel destinies, I turn from him with 
 disaffection ; nor do I conceive that lie will 
 blame me for the impulse. But when 1 c(Mi- 
 sider my own fates, I grow conscious of his
 
 gentle dealing: I see him chastise with helpful 
 
 blows, 1 feel his stripes to be caresses ; and this 
 
 knowledge is my comfort that reconciles me to 
 
 the world. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 SEPTEMBER FOURTH 
 
 Hurry is the resource of the faithless. Where 
 a man can trust his own heart, and those of his 
 friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day. 
 
 Doivn the Oise. 
 
 SEPTEMBER FIFTH 
 
 Perhaps there is no subject on which a man 
 should speak so gravely as that industry, what- 
 ever it may be, which is the occupation or delight 
 of his life ; which is his tool to earn or serve 
 with ; and which, if it be unworthy, stamps 
 himself as a mere incubus of dumb and greedy 
 bowels on the shoulders of labouring humanity. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 SEPTEMBER SIXTH 
 
 Hope, they say, deserts us at no period of our 
 
 existence. From first to last, and in the face 
 
 of smarting disillusions, we continue to expect 
 
 good fortune, better health, and better conduct ; 
 
 and that so confidently that we judge it needless 
 
 to deserve them. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisqtie. 
 
 [ 82 ]
 
 SEPTEMBER SEVENTH 
 
 To hold the same views at forty as we held at 
 
 twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of 
 
 years, and take rank, not as a prophet, hut as an 
 
 unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser. 
 
 It is as if a ship captain should sail to India from 
 
 the Port of London ; and having brought a chart 
 
 of the Thames on deck at his first setting out, 
 
 should obstinately use no other for the whole 
 
 voyage. 
 
 Crabbed Age and Youth. 
 
 SEPTEMBER EIGHTH 
 
 Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his busi- 
 ness, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect 
 of many things. And it is not by any means 
 certain that a man's business is the most impor- 
 tant thing he has to do. 
 
 An Apology for Idlers. 
 
 SEPTEMBER NINTH 
 
 In this world, in spite of its many agreeable 
 features, even the most sensitive must undergo 
 some drudgery to live. It is not possible to de- 
 vote your time to study and meditation without 
 what arc quaintly but happily denominated pri- 
 vate means ; these absent, a man must contrive 
 to earn his bread by some service to the public 
 such as the public cares to pay him for. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Thoreau. 
 
 L 83 J
 
 SErTEMBER TENTH 
 
 Wc arc in such haste to be doing, to be writing, 
 
 to be gathering gear, to make our voice audible 
 
 a moment in the derisive silence of eternity, that 
 
 we forget that one thing, of which these are but 
 
 the parts — namely, to live. We fall in love, 
 
 we drink hard, we run to and fro upon the earth 
 
 like frightened sheep. And now you are to ask 
 
 yourself if, when all is done, you would not have 
 
 been better to sit by the fire at home, and be 
 
 happy thinking. 
 
 Walking Tours. 
 
 SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH 
 
 The essence of love is kindness. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 SEPTEMBER TWELFTH 
 
 The course of our education is answered best bv 
 those poems and romances where we breathe a 
 magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet 
 generous and pious characters. 
 
 Bonks 'which ha^e Influenced me. 
 
 SEPTEMBER THIRTEENTH 
 
 A good son, who can fulfil what is expected of 
 him, has done his work in life. He has to re- 
 deem the sins of many, and restore the world's 
 
 confidence in children. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 L «4 ]
 
 SEPTEMBER FOURTEENTH 
 
 I meant when I was a young man to write a 
 great poem ; and now I am cobbling little prose 
 articles and in excellent good spirits, I thank 
 you. So, too, I meant to lead a life that should 
 keep mounting from the first ; and though 1 
 have been repeatedly down again below sea-level, 
 and am scarce higher than when I started, I am 
 as keen as ever for that enterprise. Our busi- 
 ness in this world is not to succeed, but to 
 continue to fail, in good spirits. 
 
 Discipline of Conscience. 
 
 SEPTEMBER FIFTEENTH 
 
 It were to be desired that all literary work, and 
 chiefly works of art, issued from sound, human, 
 healthy, and potent impulses, whether grave or 
 laughing, humorous, romantic, or religious. Yet 
 it cannot be denied that some valuable books arc- 
 partially insane ; some mostly religious, partiallv 
 inhuman ; and very many tainted with morbidity 
 
 and impotence. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 SEPTEMBER SIXTEENTH 
 
 He who indulges habitually in tlu- intoxicating 
 
 pleasures of imagination, for the very reason 
 
 that he reaps a greater pleasure tli.ui others, 
 
 must resign himself to a krencr p.iin, ;i more 
 
 intolerable and utter prostration. 
 
 // Retrospect. 
 
 I «5 I
 
 SEPTEMBER SEVENTEENTH 
 
 When we arc put down in some unsightly 
 
 neighbourhood, and especially if we have come 
 
 to be more or less dependent on what we see, 
 
 we must set ourselves to hunt out beautiful 
 
 things with all the ardour and patience of a 
 
 botanist after a rare plant. 
 
 Unpleasant Places. 
 
 SEPTEMBER EIGHTEENTH 
 
 All the world may be an aristocrat, and play 
 the duke among marquises, and the reigning 
 monarch among dukes, if he will only outvie 
 them in tranquillity. An imperturbable de- 
 meanour comes from perfect patience. Quiet 
 minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go 
 on in fortune or misfortune at their own private 
 place, like a clock during a thunder-storm. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 SEPTEMBER NINETEENTH 
 It is very nice to think 
 The world is full of meat and drink, 
 With little children saying grace 
 
 In every Christian kind of place. 
 
 A Thought. 
 
 [ 86 ]
 
 SEPTEMBER TWENTIETH 
 
 All we men and women have our sins ; and 
 they are a pain to those that love us, and the 
 deeper the love, the crueller the pain. 
 
 Admiral Guinea. 
 
 SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 For my part, I should try to secure some part 
 of every day for meditation, above all in the 
 early morning and the open air i but how that 
 time was to be improved I should leave to cir- 
 cumstance and the inspiration of the hour. Nor 
 if I spent it in whistling or numbering my 
 footsteps, should I consider it misspent for that. 
 I should have given my conscience a fair field ; 
 when it has anything to say, I know too well it 
 can speak daggers ; therefore, for this time, my 
 hard taskmaster has given me a holy-day, and I 
 may go in again rejoicing to my breakfast and 
 the human business of the day. 
 
 Discipline of Conscience. 
 
 SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 There is something stupefying in the recurrence 
 of unimportant things. And it is only on rare 
 provocations that we can rise to take an outlook 
 beyond daily concerns, and comprehend the narrow 
 limits and great possibilities of our existence. 
 
 Familiar Studies — IValt Whitman. 
 
 L «7 ]
 
 SEPTEMBER TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 No class of man is altogether bad ; but each has 
 
 its own faults and virtues. 
 
 Kidnapped. 
 
 SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 It is one of the worst things of sentiment that 
 
 the voice grows to be more important than the 
 
 words, and the speaker than that which is 
 
 spoken. 
 
 The Master of Ballantrae. 
 
 SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 We should hesitate to assume command of an 
 
 army or a trading-smack ; shall we not hesitate 
 
 to become surety for the life and happiness, now 
 
 and henceforward, of our dearest friend ? To 
 
 be nobody's enemy but one's own, although it is 
 
 never possible to any, can least of all be possible 
 
 to one who is married. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks 
 
 SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH 
 
 Even in love there are unlovely humours; am- 
 biguous acts, unpardonable words, may yet have 
 sprung from a kind sentiment. If the injured 
 one could read your heart, you may be sure that 
 he would understand and pardon ; but, alas ! the 
 heart cannot be shown — it has to be demon- 
 strated in words. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 [ «8 ]
 
 SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 
 
 That for which man lives is not the same thing 
 
 for all individuals nor in all ages; yet it has a 
 
 common base ; what he seeks and what he must 
 
 have is that which will seize and hold his 
 
 attention. 
 
 The Day after To-morroiv. 
 
 SEPTEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 
 
 The correction of silence is what kills; when 
 you know you have transgressed, and your friend 
 says nothing and avoids your eye. 
 
 Talk and Talkers. 
 
 SEPTEMBER TWENTY-NINTH 
 
 As we go catching and catching at this or that 
 
 corner of knowledge, now getting a foresight of 
 
 generous possibilities, now chilled with a glimpse 
 
 of prudence, we may compare the headlong 
 
 course of our years to a swift torrent in which a 
 
 man is carried away ; now he is dashed against 
 
 a boulder, now he grapples for a moment to 2 
 
 trailing sprav ; at the end, he is hurled out ;uul 
 
 overwhelmed in a dark and bottomless ocean. 
 
 We have no more than glimpses and touches ; 
 
 we arc torn away from our theories ; we are 
 
 spun round and round and shown this or the 
 
 other view of life, until only fools or knaves can 
 
 hold to their opinions. 
 
 Crabbiil /ige and t'uut/i. 
 
 L 89 ]
 
 SEPTEMBER THIRTIETH 
 
 Nothing grave has yet befallen me but I have 
 been able to reconcile my mind to its occurrence, 
 and see in it, from my own little and partial 
 point of view, an evidence of a tender and pro- 
 tecting God. Even the misconduct into which 
 I have been led has been blessed to my improve- 
 ment. If I did not sin, and that so glaringly 
 that my conscience is convicted on the spot, I 
 do not know what I should become, but I feel 
 
 sure I should grow worse. 
 
 Gratitude to God. 
 
 [ 90 ]
 
 OCTOBER 
 
 OCTOBER FIRST 
 
 O ING a song of seasons ! 
 
 Something bright in all ! 
 Flowers in the summer. 
 Fires in the fall ! 
 
 Autumn Fires. 
 
 OCTOBER SECOND 
 
 It is the mark of a good action that it appears 
 inevitable in the retrospect. We should have 
 been cut-throats to do otherwise. And there 's 
 an end. We ought to know distinctly that we 
 are damned for what we do wrong ; but when 
 we have done right, we have only been gentle- 
 men, after all. There is nothing to make a 
 
 work about. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 OCTOBER THIRD 
 
 New truth is only useful to supplement the old ; 
 rough truth is only wanted to expand, not to 
 destroy, our civil and often elegant conventions. 
 He who cannot judge had better stick to fiction 
 
 L 9" J
 
 and the dailv papers. There he will get little 
 harm, and, in the first at least, some good. 
 
 Books njuhich hwve Influenced me. 
 
 OCTOBER FOURTH 
 
 Surely, at this time of day in the nineteenth 
 century, there is nothing that an honest man 
 should fear more timorously than getting and 
 spending more than he deserves. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 OCTOBER FIFTH 
 
 People are all glad to shut their eyes ; and it 
 gives them a very simple pleasure when they 
 can forget that our laws commit a million indi- 
 vidual injustices, to be once roughly just in the 
 general ; that the bread that we eat, and the 
 quiet of the family, and all that embellishes life 
 and makes it worth having, have to be purchased 
 by death — by the deaths of animals, and the 
 deaths of men wearied out with labor, and the 
 deaths of those- criminals called tyrants and 
 revolutionaries, and the deaths of those revolu- 
 tionaries called criminals. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Victor Hugo. 
 
 [ 92 ]
 
 OCTOBER SIXTH 
 
 It is a question hard to he resolved, whether you 
 should at any time criminate another to defend 
 yourself. I have done it many times, and al- 
 ways had a troubled conscience for my pains. 
 
 Justice and Justification. 
 
 OCTOBER SEVENTH 
 
 There is always something painful in sudden 
 
 contact with the good qualities that we do not 
 
 possess. 
 
 A Retrospect. 
 
 OCTOBER EIGHTH 
 
 Falling in love and winning love are often diffi- 
 cult tasks to overbearing and rebellious spirits -, 
 but to keep in love is also a business of some 
 importance, to which both man and wife must 
 
 bring kindness and goodwill. 
 
 El Dorado. 
 
 OCTOBER NINTH 
 
 As courage and intelligence are the two qualities 
 best worth a good man's cultivation, so it is the 
 first part of intelligence to recognise our pre- 
 carious estate in life, and the first part of cour- 
 age to be not at all abashed before the fact. 
 
 Acs Irlf'lex. 
 
 \ 93 1
 
 OCTOBER TENTH 
 
 Trees are the most civil society. An old oak 
 that has been growing where he stands since 
 before the Reformation, taller than many spires, 
 more stately than the greater part of mountains, 
 and yet a living thing, liable to sicknesses and 
 death, like you and me : is not that in itself a 
 speaking lesson in history ? 
 
 On the Sambre Canalized. 
 
 OCTOBER ELEVENTH 
 
 The more you look into it the more infinite are 
 
 the class distinctions among men ; and possibly, 
 
 by a happy dispensation, there is no one at all 
 
 at the bottom of the scale ; no one but can find 
 
 some superiority over somebody else, to keep up 
 
 his pride withal. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 OCTOBER TWELFTH 
 
 God made you, but you marry yourself; and for 
 
 all that your wife suffers, no one is responsible 
 
 but you. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 OCTOBER THIRTEENTH 
 
 Let us, by all means, fight against that hide- 
 bound stolidity of sensation and sluggishness of 
 mind which blurs and decolorises for poor 
 natures the wonderful pageant of consciousness ; 
 let us teach people, as much as we can, to 
 
 [ 94 ]
 
 enjoy, and they will learn for themselves to 
 sympathise; but let us see to it, above all, that 
 we give these lessons in a brave, vivacious note, 
 and build the man up in courage while we 
 demolish its substitute, indifference. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Walt Whitman. 
 
 OCTOBER FOURTEENTH 
 
 Bv managing its own work and following its 
 
 own happy inspiration, youth is doing the best it 
 
 can to endow the leisure of age. A full, busy 
 
 youth is your only prelude to a self-contained 
 
 and independent ag». 
 
 Crabbed Age and Youth. 
 
 OCTOBER FIFTEENTH 
 
 Talk is indeed, both the scene and instrument of 
 friendship. It is in talk alone that the friends 
 can measure strength, and enjoy that amicable 
 counter-assertion of personality which is the 
 gauge of relations and the sport of lite. 
 
 Talk and Talkers. 
 
 OCTOBER SIXTEENTH 
 
 We must all set our pocket watches by the 
 clock of fate. There is a headlong, forthright 
 tide, that bears away man with his fancies like 
 straw, and runs fast in time and space. 
 
 Doivtt the Oise. 
 
 95
 
 OCTOBER SEVENTEENTH 
 
 You would think, when the child was born, there 
 would be an end to trouble ; and yet it is only 
 the beginning of fresh anxieties; and when you 
 have seen it through its teething and its educa- 
 tion, and at last its marriage, alas ! it is only to 
 have new fears, new quivering sensibilities, with 
 every day ; and the health of your children's 
 children grows as touching a concern as that of 
 
 your own. 
 
 El Dorado. 
 
 OCTOBER EIGHTEENTH 
 
 It is our business here to speak, for it is by the 
 
 tongue that we multiply ourselves most influen- 
 
 tially. To speak kindly, wisely, and pleasantly 
 
 is the first of duties, the easiest of duties, and 
 
 the duty that is most blessed in its performance. 
 
 For it is natural, it whiles away life, it spreads 
 
 intelligence; and it increases the acquaintance of 
 
 man with man. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 OCTOBER NINETEENTH 
 
 A good man or woman may keep a youth some 
 little while in clearer air; but the contemporary 
 atmosphere is all powerful in the end on the 
 average of mediocre characters. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 [ 96 ]
 
 OCTOBER TWENTIETH 
 
 The true ignorance is when a man does not 
 know that he has received a good gift, or begins 
 to imagine that he has got it for himself. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 OCTOBER TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 It is the particular cross of parents that when 
 the child grows up and becomes himself instead 
 of that pale ideal they had preconceived, they 
 must accuse their own harshness or indulgence 
 for this natural result. They have all been like 
 the duck and hatched swan's eggs, or the other 
 way about; yet they tell themselves with miser- 
 able penitence that the blame lies with them ; 
 and had they sat more closely, the swan would 
 have been a duck, and home-keeping in spite of 
 
 all. 
 
 Parent and Child. 
 
 OCTOBER TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 Not all men can read all books ; it is only in a 
 chosen few that any man will lind his appointed 
 food ; and the fittest lessons are the most palnt- 
 ablc, and make themselves welcome to the mind. 
 
 Buoks nvfiic/i have Infiuemed me. 
 
 [ 97 ]
 
 OCTOBF.R TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 Tile existence of a man is so small a thing to 
 take, so mighty a thing to employ ! 
 
 The Suicide Club. 
 
 OCTOBER TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 To love playthings well as a child, to lead an 
 adventurous and honourable youth, and to settle 
 when the time arrives, into a green and smiling 
 age, is to be a good artist in life and deserve 
 well of yourself and your neighbour. 
 
 Crabbed Age and Youth. 
 
 OCTOBER TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 Times are changed with him who marries ; there 
 
 are no more by-path meadows, where you may 
 
 innocently linger, but the road lies long and 
 
 straight and dusty to the grave. Idleness which 
 
 is often becoming and even wise in the bachelor, 
 
 begins to wear a different aspect when you have 
 
 a wife to support. 
 
 Virgintbus Puerisque. 
 
 OCTOBER TWENTY-SIXTH 
 
 Samuel Johnson, although he was very sorry to 
 be poor, " was a great arguer for the advantages 
 of poverty " in his ill days. Thus it is that 
 brave men carry their crosses, and smile with 
 the fox burrowing in their vitals. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Franfois Villon. 
 
 [ 98 ]
 
 OCTOBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 
 
 To be truly happy is a question of how we 
 
 begin and not of how we end, of what we want 
 
 and not of what we have. 
 
 El Dorado. 
 
 OCTOBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 
 
 When people take the trouble to do dignified 
 acts, it is worth while to take a little more, and 
 allow the dignity to be common to all concerned. 
 
 On the Sombre Canalized. 
 
 OCTOBER TWENTY-NINTH 
 
 Good talk is dramatic; it is like an impromptu 
 
 piece of acting where each should represent 
 
 himself to the greatest advantage; and that is 
 
 the best kind of talk where each speaker is most 
 
 fully and candidly himself, and where, if you 
 
 were to shift the speeches round from one to 
 
 another, there would be the greatest loss in 
 
 significance and perspicuity. 
 
 Talk and Talkers. 
 
 OCTOBER THIRTIETH 
 
 There is no duty we so much underrate as the 
 duty of being happy. By bcnig happy, we sow 
 anonymous benefits upon the world, which re- 
 main unknown even to ourselves, or when they 
 arc disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the 
 
 benefactor. 
 
 /In Apology for Idlers. 
 
 [ 99 ]
 
 OCTOBER rillRTY-FIRST 
 
 To live is sometimes very difficult, but it is 
 
 never meritorious in itself; and we must have 
 
 a reason to allege to our own conscience why 
 
 we should continue to exist upon this crowded 
 
 earth. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Thoreau. 
 
 [ 100 ]
 
 NOVEMBER 
 
 NOVEMBER FIRST 
 
 HOPE lives on ignorance; open-eyed Faith is 
 built upon a knowledge of our life, of the 
 tyranny of circumstance and the frailtv of human 
 resolution. Hope looks for unqualified success; 
 but Faith counts certainly on failure, and takes 
 honourable defeat to be a form of victory. 
 
 Firginibtts Puerisqtte. 
 
 NOVEMBER SECOND 
 
 Men who are in any way typical of a stage of 
 
 progress may be compared more justly to the 
 
 hand upon the dial of the clock, which continues 
 
 to advance as it indicates, than to the stationary 
 
 milestone, which is only the measure of what is 
 
 past. 
 
 Victor Hugo's Romances. 
 
 NOVEMBER THIRD 
 
 Over the far larj/fr proportion of the field of 
 literature, the health or disease of the wi iter's 
 mind (jr momentarv liinnour forms not oiil\ the 
 leading feature of his woik, but is, at bottom, 
 [ '01 j
 
 the only thing he can communicate to others. 
 In all works of art, widely speaking, it is iirst 
 of all the author's attitude that is narrated, though 
 in the attitude there be implied a whole experi- 
 ence and a theory of life. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 NOVEMBER FOURTH 
 
 Passion, wisdom, creative force, the power of 
 mystery or colour, are allotted in the hour of 
 birth, and can be neither learnt nor simulated. 
 
 A Note on Realism. 
 
 NOVEMBER FIFTH 
 
 Surely, of all smells in the world the smell of 
 many trees is the sweetest and most fortifying. 
 The sea has a rude pistolling sort of odour, that 
 takes you in the nostrils like snufF, and carries 
 with it a fine sentiment of open water and tall 
 ships ; but the smell of a forest, which comes 
 nearest to this in tonic quality, surpasses it by 
 many degrees in the quality of softness. Again, 
 the smell of the sea has little variety, but the 
 smell of a forest is infinitely changeful ; it varies 
 with the hour of the day, not in strength merely, 
 but in character ; and the different sorts of trees, 
 as you go from one zone of the wood to an- 
 other, seem to live among different kinds of 
 
 atmosphere. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 [ 102 ]
 
 NOVF.MBER SIXTH 
 
 If a mail works hearty in the order of nature, he 
 
 gets bread and he receives comfort, and whatever 
 
 he touches breeds. 
 
 Prince Errant. 
 
 NOVEMBER SEVENTH 
 
 No fate is altogether easy; but trials are our 
 touchstone, trials overcome our reward. 
 
 Memoir of Fleming Jeenkin. 
 
 NOVEMBER EIGHTH 
 
 We are not all patient Grizzels, by good fortune, 
 
 but the most of us human beings with feelings 
 
 and tempers of our own. 
 
 Nurses. 
 
 NOVEMBER NINTH 
 
 Happiness, at least, is not solitary ; it joys to 
 communicate; it loves others, for it depends on 
 them for its existence; it sanctions and encour- 
 ages to all delights that are not unkind in them- 
 selves ; if it lived to a thousand, it would not 
 make excision of a single humorous passage ; 
 and while the self-improver dwindles toward the 
 prig, and, if he be not of an excellent constitu- 
 tion, may even grow deformed into ;in Ohcr- 
 mann, the very name and appearance of a happy 
 man breathe of good nature, and help the rest 
 
 of us to live. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Thoreau. 
 
 L '"3 J
 
 NOVEMBER TENTH 
 
 It must always be foul to tell what is false; and 
 it can never be safe to suppress what is true. 
 The very fact that you omit may be what some- 
 body was wanting, for one man's meat is another 
 
 man's poison. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 NOVEMBER ELEVENTH 
 
 There is only one way to be honest, and the 
 
 name of that is thrift. 
 
 Admiral Guinea. 
 
 NOVEMBER TWELFTH 
 
 Marriage is like life in this — that it is a field 
 of battle, and not a bed of roses. 
 
 Virginibus Puertsque. 
 
 NOVEMBER THIRTEENTH 
 
 Pleasures are more beneficial than duties because, 
 like the quality of mercy, they are not strained, 
 and they are twice blest. There must always 
 be two to a kiss, and there may be a score in a 
 jest; but wherever there is an element of sacri- 
 fice, the favour is conferred with pain, and, 
 among generous people, received with confusion. 
 
 An Apology fur Idlers. 
 
 [ 104 ]
 
 NOVEMBER FOURTEENTH 
 
 Literature, like any other art, is singularly inter- 
 esting to the artist; and in a degree peculiar to 
 itself among the arts, it is useful to mankind. 
 These are the sufficient justifications for any 
 young man or woman who adopts it as the 
 
 business of his life. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 NOVEMBER FIFTEENTH 
 
 The result is the reward of actions, not the test. 
 The result is a child born ; if it be beautiful and 
 healthy, well -, if club-footed or crook-back, per- 
 haps well also. We cannot direct. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 NOVEMBER SIXTEENTH 
 
 Humble or even truckling virtue may walk un- 
 spotted in this life. But only those who despise 
 the pleasures can afford to despise the opinion of 
 
 the world. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Franfois Villon. 
 
 NOVEMBER SEVENTEENTH 
 
 Our life about us lies 
 O'erscrawlcd with crooked writ-, we toil in vain 
 To hear the hymn of ancient harmonics 
 That quire upon the mountain or the plain; 
 And from the august silence of the skies 
 Babble of speech returns to us again. 
 
 Tfie Arabesque. 
 
 L '05 1
 
 NOVEMBER EIGHTEENTH 
 
 To wash in one of God's rivers in the open air 
 
 seems to mc a sort of cheerful solemnity or 
 
 semi-pagan act of worsliip. To dabble among 
 
 dishes in a bedroom may perhaps make clean 
 
 the body ; but the imagination takes no share in 
 
 such cleansing. 
 
 Tra-uels 'juith a Donkey. 
 
 NOVEMBER NINETEENTH 
 
 The more he is alone with nature, the greater 
 
 man and his doings bulk in the consideration of 
 
 his fellow-men. 
 
 Toils and Pleasures. 
 
 NOVEMBER TWENTIETH 
 
 The nearer you come to it, you see that death 
 is a dark and dusty corner, where a man gets 
 into his tomb and has the door shut after him 
 till the judgment day. 
 
 The Sire de Mal'etroifs Door. 
 
 NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 There are two duties incumbent upon any man 
 who enters on the business of writing : truth to 
 the fact and a good spirit in the treatment. In 
 every department of literature, though so low as 
 hardly to deserve the name, truth to the fact is 
 of importance to the education and comfort of 
 
 [ »o6 ]
 
 mankind, and so hard to preserve, that the faith- 
 ful trying to do so will lend some dignity to the 
 
 man who tries it. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 NOVEMBER TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 Where youth agrees with age, not where they 
 
 differ, wisdom lies; and it is when the young 
 
 disciple finds his heart to beat in tune with his 
 
 gray-bearded teacher's that a lesson may be 
 
 learned. 
 
 Talk and Talkers. 
 
 NOVEMBER TWENTY-THIRD 
 
 The bodv is a house of many windows: there 
 we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the 
 passers-by to come and love us. 
 
 Virginibus Pucrisque. 
 
 NOVEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 There are not three ways of getting money : 
 there are but two : to earn and steal. 
 
 Of Lo've and Politics. 
 
 NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 Wc are different with different friends ; yet if we 
 look closely wc shall find that every such relation 
 reposes on some particular apotheosis of oneself ; 
 with each friend, although we could not distinguish 
 it in words from any other, we have at least one 
 
 L ^07 J
 
 special reputation to preserve : and it is thus 
 that wc run, when mortified, to our friend or the 
 woman that wc love, not to hear ourselves called 
 better, but to be better men in point of fact. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Thoreau. 
 
 NOVEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH 
 
 We live the time that a match flickers ; we pop 
 the cork of a ginger-beer bottle, and the earth- 
 quake swallows us on the instant. Is it not 
 odd, is it not incongruous, is it not, in the high- 
 est sense of human speech, incredible, that we 
 should think so highly of the ginger-beer, and 
 regard so little the devouring earthquake ? 
 
 Aes Triplex. 
 
 NOVEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 
 
 When you have married your wife, you would 
 think you were got upon a hilltop, and might be- 
 gin to go downward by an easy slope. But you 
 have only ended courting to begin marriage. 
 
 El Dorado. 
 
 NOVEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 
 
 A man may practise resignation all his days, 
 as he takes physic, and not come to like it in 
 
 the end. 
 
 Prince Errant. 
 
 [ io8 ]
 
 NOVEMBER TWENTY-NINTH 
 
 To take home to your hearth that living witness 
 whose blame will most affect you, to eat, to 
 sleep, to live with your most admiring and thence 
 most exacting judge, is not this to domesticate 
 the living God ? Each becomes a conscience to 
 the other, legible like a clock up on the chimney- 
 piece. Each offers to his mate a figure of the 
 consequence of human acts. And while I may 
 still continue by my inconsiderate or violent life 
 to spread far-reaching havoc throughout man's 
 confederacy, I can do so no more, at least, in 
 i<rnorancc and levitv ; one face shall wince be- 
 fore me in the flesh ; I have taken home the 
 sorrows I create to mv own hearth and bed ; 
 and though I continue to sin, it must be now 
 
 with open eyes. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 NOVEMBER THIRTIETH 
 
 What is care? impiety. Joy? the whole duty 
 
 of man. 
 
 Macaire. 
 
 L '09 J
 
 '^mdm^^p-'^^'^ 
 
 DECEMBER 
 
 DECEMBER FIRST 
 
 TT is a poor heart, and a poorer age, that can- 
 "^ not accept the conditions of life with some 
 heroic readiness. 
 
 familiar Studies — Franfois Fillon. 
 
 DECEMBER SECOND 
 
 Never allow your mind to dwell on your own 
 misconduct : that is ruin. The conscience has 
 morbid sensibilities ; it must be employed but 
 not indulged, like the imagination or the stomach. 
 Let each stab suffice for the occasion ; to play 
 with this spiritual pain turns to penance; and a 
 person easily learns to feel good by dallying with 
 the consci<jusncss of having done wrong, 
 
 Rejlections anJ Remarks. 
 
 DECEMBER TiURD 
 
 The cruellest lies arc often told in silence. A 
 man may have sat in a room for hours and nt)t 
 opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room 
 a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. . . . And 
 again, a lie may be told by a tiutli, oi a tiuth 
 
 [ I" ]
 
 conveyed thioiigh a lie. Truth to facts is not 
 
 always truth to sentiment ; and part of the truth, 
 
 as often happens in answer to a question, may 
 
 be the foulest calumny. 
 
 Virginibus Piierisque. 
 
 DECEMBER FOURTH 
 
 The desire to please, to shine with a certain 
 softness of lustre and to draw a fascinating 
 picture of oneself, banishes from conversation all 
 that is sterling and most of what is humorous. 
 
 Talk and Talkers. 
 
 DECEMBER FIFTH 
 
 It is in virtue of his own desires and curiosities 
 
 that any man continues to exist with even 
 
 patience, that he is charmed by the look of 
 
 things and people, and that he wakens every 
 
 morning with a renewed appetite for work and 
 
 pleasure. Desire and curiosity are the two eyes 
 
 throu":h which he sees the world in the most 
 
 enchanted colours : it is they that make women 
 
 beautiful or fossils interesting : and the man 
 
 may squander his estate and come to beggary, 
 
 but if he keeps these two amulets he is still rich 
 
 in the possibilities of pleasure. 
 
 El Dorado. 
 
 [ 112 ]
 
 DECEMBER SIXTH 
 
 You may have a head knowledge that other 
 
 people live more poorly than yourself, but it is 
 
 not agreeable — I was going to say, it is against 
 
 the etiquette of the universe — to sit at the 
 
 same table and pick your own superior diet 
 
 from among their crusts. 
 
 An htlnnd Voyage. 
 
 DECEMBER SEVENTH 
 
 Courage is the principal virtue, for all the others 
 
 presuppose it. If you arc afraid, you may do 
 
 anything. Courage is to be cultivated, and some 
 
 of the negative virtues may be sacrificed in the 
 
 cultivation. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 DECEMBER EIGHTH 
 
 After a good woman, and a good book, and 
 
 tobacco, there is nothing so agreeable on earth 
 
 as a river. 
 
 Doivn the O'tse. 
 
 DECEMBER NINTH 
 
 A man docs not only reflect upon what he 
 might have done in a future that is never to be 
 his ; but iicholding himself so early a deserter 
 from the fight, he cats his heart for the good he 
 might have done already. To have been so 
 useless and now to lose all hope of being useful 
 any more — there it is that death and memory 
 
 L "3 1
 
 assail him. And even if mankind shall go on, 
 
 founding heroic cities, practising heroic virtues, 
 
 rising steadily from strength to strength; even 
 
 if his work shall be fulfilled, his friends consoled, 
 
 his wife remarried by a better than he ; how 
 
 shall this alter, in one jot, his estimation of a 
 
 career which was his only business in this 
 
 world, which was so fitfully pursued, and which 
 
 is now so ineffectively to end ? 
 
 Ordered South. 
 
 DECEMBER TENTH 
 
 That many of us lead such lives as they would 
 heartily disown after two hour-s serious reflec- 
 tion on the subject is, I am afraid, a true, and, I 
 am sure, a very galling thought. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Walt Whitman. 
 
 DECEMBER ELEVENTH 
 
 There is not a life in all the records of the past 
 
 but, properly studied, might lend a hint and a 
 
 help to some contemporary. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 DECEMBER TWELFTH 
 
 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. 
 
 Aes Triplex. 
 
 [ "4 ]
 
 DECEMBER THIRTEENTH 
 
 Because I have reached Paris, I am not ashamed 
 
 of having passed through Newhaven and Dieppe. 
 
 They were very good places to pass through, 
 
 and I am none the less at my destination. All 
 
 my old opinions were only stages on the wav to 
 
 the one 1 now hold, as itself is only a stage on 
 
 the way to something else. 
 
 Crabbed Age and Youth. 
 
 DECEMBER FOURTEENTH 
 
 A common sentiment is one of those great goods 
 
 that make life palatable and ever new. The 
 
 knowledge that another has felt as we have felt, 
 
 and seen things, even if they are little things, not 
 
 much otherwise than we have seen them, will 
 
 continue to the end to be one of life's choicest 
 
 pleasures. 
 
 Roads. 
 
 DECEMBER FIFTEENTH 
 
 Every one who has been upon a walking or a 
 boating tour, living in the open air, with the 
 body in constant exercise and the mind in 
 fallow, knows true ease and quiet. The irritat- 
 ing action of the brain is set at rest; wc think 
 in a plain, unfeverish temper; little things seem 
 big enough, and great things no longer portentous; 
 and the world is smilingly accepted as it is. 
 
 Familiar Studies — //'</// If 7i it man. 
 
 L "5 J
 
 DECKMBER SIXTEENTH 
 
 Honour can survive a wound ; it can live and 
 thrive without a member. 
 
 Memories and Portraits. 
 
 DECEMBER SEVENTEENTH 
 
 There are many matters in which you may way- 
 lay Destiny, and bid him stand and deliver. 
 Hard work, high thinking, adventurous excite- 
 ment, and a great deal more that forms a part of 
 this or the other person's spiritual bill of fare, 
 are within the reach of almost any one who can 
 
 dare a little and be patient. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 DECEMBER EIGHTEENTH 
 
 The solitary recoils from the practice of life, 
 shocked by its unsightliness. But if I could 
 only retain that superfine and guiding delicacy of 
 the sense that grows in solitude, and still combine 
 with it that courage of performance which is 
 never abashed by any failure, but steadily pur- 
 sues its right and human design in a scene of 
 imperfection, I might hope to strike in the long- 
 run a conduct more tender to others and less 
 humiliatino; to myself. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 [ Il6 ]
 
 DECEMBER NINETEENTH 
 
 Marriage is one long conversation, chequered 
 
 by disputes. The disputes are valueless ; they 
 
 but ingrain the difference; the heroic heart of 
 
 woman prompting her at once to nail her 
 
 colours to the mast. 
 
 Talk and Talkers. 
 
 DECEMBER TWENTIETH 
 
 How little we pay our way in life! Although 
 we have our purses continually in our hand, the 
 better part of service goes still unrewarded. 
 
 An Inland Voyage. 
 
 DECEMBER TWENTY-FIRST 
 
 If I from my spy-hole, looking with purblind 
 eyes upon the least part of a fraction of the 
 universe, yet perceive in my own destiny some 
 broken evidence of a plan and some signals i)f 
 an overruling goodness; shall I then be so wv.xA 
 as to complain that all cannot be deciphered ? 
 Shall I not rather wonder, with inlinite and 
 grateful surprise, that in so vast a scheme 1 
 seem to have been able to read, however little, 
 and that that little was encouraging to faith ? 
 
 Gratitude to God. 
 
 [ 117 ]
 
 DECEMBER TWENTY-SECOND 
 
 You may safely go to school with hope ; but 
 
 ere you marry, should have learned the mingled 
 
 lesson of the world : that dolls are stuffed with 
 
 sawdust, and yet are excellent playthings ; that 
 
 hope and love address themselves to a perfection 
 
 never realised, and yet, firmly held, become the 
 
 salt and staff of life. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 DECEMBER TWENTY-TMIRD 
 
 Truth in a relation, truth to your own heart and 
 
 your friends, never to feign or falsify emotion — 
 
 that is the truth which makes love possible and 
 
 mankind happy. 
 
 Virginibus Puerisque. 
 
 DECEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH 
 
 A child should always say what 's true 
 And speak when he is spoken to, 
 And behave mannerly at table : 
 At least as far as he is able. 
 
 Whole Duty of Children. 
 
 DECEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH 
 
 The nearer the intimacy, the more cuttingly do 
 we feel the unworthiness of those we love \ and 
 because you love one, and would die for that 
 love to-morrow, you have not forgiven, and you 
 never will forgive, that friend's misconduct. If 
 
 L ''^ 1
 
 you want a person's faults, go to those who love 
 him. They will not tell you, but they know. 
 And herein lies the magnanimous courage of 
 love, that it endures this knowledge without 
 
 change. 
 
 Familiar Studies — Thoreau. 
 
 DECEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH 
 
 Doubtless the world is quite right in a million 
 ways ; but you have to be kicked about a little 
 to convince you of the fact. And in the mean- 
 while you must do something, be something, 
 
 believe something. 
 
 Crabbed Age and Youth. 
 
 DECEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 
 
 I would not so much fear to give hostages to 
 
 fortune, if fortune ruled only in material things; 
 
 but fortune, as we call those minor and more 
 
 inscrutable workings of providence, rules also in 
 
 the sphere of conduct. 
 
 Reflections and Remarks. 
 
 DECEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 
 
 While we may none of us, perhaps, be very 
 vigorous, very original, or very wise, I still con- 
 tend that, ill the humblest sort of literary work, 
 wc have it in our power cither to do great harm 
 or great good. 
 
 Profession of Letters. 
 
 r '^9 1
 
 DECKMBKR TWENTY-NINTH 
 
 To husband a favourite claret until the batch 
 turns sour, is not at all an artful stroke of policy ; 
 and how much more with a whole cellar — a 
 whole bodily existence ! People may lay down 
 their lives with cheerfulness in the sure expecta- 
 tion of a blessed immortality ; but that is a dif- 
 ferent affair from giving up youth with all its 
 admirable pleasures, in the hope of a better 
 quality of gruel in a more than problematical, 
 nay, more than improbable, old age. 
 
 Crabbed Age and Youth. 
 
 DECEMBER THIRTIETH 
 
 I feel never quite sure of your urbane and 
 smiling coteries i I fear they indulge a man's 
 vanities in silence, suffer him to encroach, en- 
 courage him on to be an ass, and send him forth 
 again, not merely contemned for the moment, 
 but radically more contemptible than when he 
 
 entered. 
 
 Memories and Portraits. 
 
 DECEMBER THIRTY-FIRST 
 
 O, hope, you 're a good word ! 
 
 Admiral Guinea. 
 
 [ 120 ]
 
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