There shall be such a mopping and a mowing
at the last day, and such blushing and confusion of
countenance for all those who have been wise in their own
esteem, and have not learnt the rough lessons that youth
hands on to age. 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. To equip a dull, respectable person with
wings would be but to make a parody of an angel.
*
Had he but talked--talked freely--let himself gush out in
words (the way youth loves to do, and should) there might
have been no tale to write upon the Weirs of Hermiston.
*
A young man feels himself one too many in the world; his is
a painful situation; he has no calling; no obvious utility;
no ties but to his parents, and these he is sure to
disregard. I do not think that a proper allowance has been
made for this true cause of suffering in youth; but by the
mere fact of a prolonged existence, we outgrow either the
fact or else the feeling. Either we become so callously
accustomed to our own useless figure in the world, or
else--and this, thank God, in the majority of cases--we so
collect about us the interest or the love of our fellows,
so multiply our effective part in the affairs of life,
that we need to entertain no longer the question of our
right to be.
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