XXVII.

SERMONS FROM FLIES.

I chanced to stand the other day in a stuffy little room, the only
window of which was shaded by a ground glass light. Before the gray
void of this cheerless window a few flies darted hither and thither in
consequential flurry, while I myself, for the time being a most blue
and down-cast mortal, was battling with the thought that life, after
all, was hardly worth the living, and the outlook for anything better
in a dim and uncertain future, too dubious to be entertained. But all
at once my vision seemed to pierce the shaded pane that intervened
between me and the great, rushing, riotous world, and such a conception
of all that lay the other side the ground glass window overflowed my
soul, that I felt rebuked as by an audible voice.

XXVIII.

THE MAN WHO KNOWS IT ALL.

There is a type of humanity we all encounter from day to day, at whose
funeral I shall carry a banner and beat a tom-tom. He is the man who
knows it all. In his grave, human forethought, and general knowledge,
and mortal perfection and everything worth knowing, shall one day lie
down and die. He never makes mistakes, nor loses his temper, nor gets
the worst of an argument, nor is worsted in a bargain. He never acts
on impulse, nor jumps without looking, nor commits himself rashly, nor