I have been disciplined since by what I have felt and seen, and I see
now how ungenerous we had been.

What right had we to make of that man a puppet for our amusement,
because he was shy, and stupid, and slow? He was as true in his
devotion, as honorable in all his wishes, as confident in his hopes till
they were blasted, as any one that has gone a wooing since the first
whisper of love was heard in Eden. If his despair was less crushing than
that of other men, it was because his principles were stronger to
endure, and perhaps because his temperament was more tranquil and cold.
As I have said, he did his day's work thoroughly, and that helped him
through a good deal. But, to the utmost of his nature, I believe he did
suffer. And could the long train of those whom disappointment has made
maniacs or suicides do more?

Let us not trust too much to the absence of feeling in these seemingly
impassive organizations.

I wonder how often the executors of old college fellows, or of
hard-faced bankers and bureaucrats, have been aggravated by finding in
that most secret drawer, which ought to have held a codicil or a jewel,
a tress, a glove, or a flower? The searcher looks at the object for a
moment, and then throws it into the rubbish-basket, with a laugh if he
is good-natured, with a curse if he is vicious and disappointed. Let it
lie there--though the dead miser valued it above all his bank-stock, and
kissed it oftener than he did his living and lawful wife and
children--what is it worth now? Say, as the grim Dean of St. Patrick
wrote on _his_ love-token, "Only a woman's hair."