should suffer so much in the aftermath while it learns the necessary
lessons. But will youth listen to the advice of middle-age?

For every man youth tramples on in the arrogance of his successful
career a hundred enemies will spring up to dog with an implacable
dislike the middle of his life. A fault of manner, a deal pressed too
hard in equity, the abruptness by which the old gods are tumbled out to
make room for the new--all these are treasured up against the successful
newcomer. In the very heat of the strife men take no more reckon of
these things than of a flesh wound in the middle of a hand-to-hand
battle. It is the after recollection on the part of the vanquished that
breeds the sullen resentment rankling against the arrogance of the
conqueror. Years afterwards, when all these things seem to have passed
away, and the very recollection of them is dim in the mind of the young
man, he will suddenly be struck by an unlooked-for blow dealt from a
strange or even a friendly quarter. He will stagger, as though hit from
behind with a stone, and exclaim, "Why did this man hit me suddenly from
the dark?" Then searching back in the chamber of his mind he will
remember some long past act of arrogance--conceived of at the time
merely as an exertion of legitimate power and ability--and he will
realise that he is paying in maturity for the indiscretions of his
youth.

He may be engaged in some scheme for the benefit of a people or a nation
in which there is not the faintest trace of self-interest. He may even
be anxious to keep the peace with all men in the pursuit of his aim. But
he may yet be compelled to look with sorrow on the wreck of his idea
and pay the default for the antagonisms of his youth. It is not,
perhaps, in the nature of youth to be prudent. The game seems
everything; the penalties either nil or remote. But if prudence was ever