of covert deceit and pharisaical humbug, less of that
white lying and envy and jealousy which constitutes
the pabulu?n of older religious and fashionable societies.
Loyalty to an honest and enlightened ideal is, after
all, the truest morality. Ill-fitting forms, provoking
dissimulation and falseness, keep the social pool always
turbid. Experience tells us that wickedness, in greater
or less degree, is inseparable from human nature; to
hide away the evil, and cover our wrong-doing with
placid smiles, polished bearing, or sanctimonious coun-
tenance, may not be, after all, the surest way of
eradicating it.
A world of ideas was here flung into a world of practise, and until right was ready, force must rule.
Like the returning heroes of the Trojan war, every leader has his history and historian, each one of whom sought to outdo the rest in their relation of daring deeds and marvelous tales, all leaving far behind in this respect yEschylus and Agamemnon.
Once when evening had stretched the shadows across the street, I saw a man of middle age, robust and proud, pouring into the bosom of a friend a tor- rent of sorrow, accompanied by bashful, agonizing tears. The cause of his grief I know not. It may have been the destruction of his hopes by fire, for on every side were the smoking cinders of a recent con- flagration which had laid hundreds low, and caused many a strong man to weep internally if not in actual tears. And who shall blame them, brave men though they be, for this is the third, or fourth, or fifth ruin with some of them, the third or fifth time fate has sent them forth with only their head and two hands to begin life anew. I did not stop to listen, gaze, or question. With grief such as this, no stranger inter- meddleth.
Yet to the disappointed man of toil I would say, yield thee not. Yet another blow, and another, and another. As long as thou canst strike, I care not for the result, thou art not overcome. A
