The Crown of Thorns [9]
market and the field, and upon men as they are in their weakness, and their selfishness, and their mutual distrust. Or they belong, it may be, to that class who are too highly charged with hope; whose sanguine notions never go by induction, but by leaps; who never calculate the difficulties, but only see the thing complete and rounded in imagination; --men with plenty of poetry, and no arithmetic; whose theories work miracles, but whose attempts are failures. It is pleasant, sometimes, to meet with people like these, who, clothed in the scantiest garments, and with only a crust upon their tables, at the least touch of suggestion, mount into a region of splendor. Their poverty all fades away; -- the bare walls, the tokens of stern want, the dusty world, are all transfigured with infinite possibilities. Achievement is only a word, and fortune comes in at a stride. The palace of beauty rises, fruits bloom in waste places, gold drops from the rocks, and the entire movement of life becomes a march of jubilee. And they are so certain this time, --the plan they now have is so sure to succeed! I repeat, it is pleasant, sometimes, to have intercourse with such men, who throw bloom and marvelousness upon the actualities of the world, from the reservoirs of their sanguine invention. At least, it is pleasant to think how this faculty of unfailing enthusiasm enables them to bear defeat, and to look away from the cold face of necessity; -- to think that, while so many are trudging after the sounding wheels and the monotonous jar of life, and lying down by the way to die, these men are marching buoyantly to a tune inside. And yet this is pleasant only from a hasty point of view. These people meet with disappointment, of course; and it is sad to think how many lives have come to absolutely nothing, and are all strewn over, from boyhood to the grave, with the fragments of splendid schemes. It is sad to think how all their visionary Balbecs and Palmyras have been reared in a real desert, -- the desert of an existence producing no substantial thing. And among these vanishing dreams, and on that melancholy waste, they learn, at last, the meaning of their disappointment. And. from their experience, we too may learn, that we are placed here to be not merely ideal artists, but actual toilers; not cadets of hope, but soldiers of endeavor.
But there are disappointments in life that succeed reasonable expectation; and these are the hardest of all to bear. I say the expectation is reasonable; and yet, very possibly, the bitterness of the disappointment comes from neglecting to consider the infirmity of all earthly things. It is hard when, not dreaming, but trying our best, we fail. It is hard to bear the burden and heat of the day, through all life's prime, and yet, with all our toil, to earn no repose for its evening hours. It is hard to accumulate a little gain, baptizing every dollar with our honest sweat, and then have it stricken from our grasp by the band of calamity or of fraud. It is hard, when we have placed our confidence in man's honor, or his friendship, to find that we are fools, and that we have been led in among rocks and serpents. And hard indeed is it to see those who were worthy our love and our faith drop by our side, and leave us alone. This dear child, the blossom of so many hopes, -- hard is it to see him die -- to fold all our expectation in his little shroud, and lay it away forever. We thought it had been he who should have comforted and blessed us, --in whose life we could have retraced the cycle of our own happiest experience, --whose unfolding faculties would have been a renewal of our knowledge, and his manhood not merely the prop but the refreshing of our age. This companion of our lot, -- this wedded wife of our heart, - why taken away now? She has shared our early struggles, and tempered our anxiety with cheerful assurance. She has tasted the bitterness; we thought she would have been a partner of the joy. She has borne our fretfulness, and helped our perplexity, and shed a serene light into
But there are disappointments in life that succeed reasonable expectation; and these are the hardest of all to bear. I say the expectation is reasonable; and yet, very possibly, the bitterness of the disappointment comes from neglecting to consider the infirmity of all earthly things. It is hard when, not dreaming, but trying our best, we fail. It is hard to bear the burden and heat of the day, through all life's prime, and yet, with all our toil, to earn no repose for its evening hours. It is hard to accumulate a little gain, baptizing every dollar with our honest sweat, and then have it stricken from our grasp by the band of calamity or of fraud. It is hard, when we have placed our confidence in man's honor, or his friendship, to find that we are fools, and that we have been led in among rocks and serpents. And hard indeed is it to see those who were worthy our love and our faith drop by our side, and leave us alone. This dear child, the blossom of so many hopes, -- hard is it to see him die -- to fold all our expectation in his little shroud, and lay it away forever. We thought it had been he who should have comforted and blessed us, --in whose life we could have retraced the cycle of our own happiest experience, --whose unfolding faculties would have been a renewal of our knowledge, and his manhood not merely the prop but the refreshing of our age. This companion of our lot, -- this wedded wife of our heart, - why taken away now? She has shared our early struggles, and tempered our anxiety with cheerful assurance. She has tasted the bitterness; we thought she would have been a partner of the joy. She has borne our fretfulness, and helped our perplexity, and shed a serene light into