wealth of Croesus availeth not for refreshing sleep, and the wisdom of
Solomon is vanity and vexation of spirit. The common people, too, know
blight and blast; their life is full of mortal toil and strife, its
fruitage grief and pain. Temptations and evil purposes are the chief
blights. When the fiery passion hath passed the soul is like a city
swept by a conflagration. Each night we go before the judgment seat.
Reason hears the case; memory gives evidence; conscience convicts, each
faculty goes to the left; self-respect pushes us out of paradise into
the desert; and the angels of our better nature guard the gates with
flaming swords.

A journey among men is like a journey through some land after the
cyclone has made the village a heap and the harvest fields a waste. An
outlook upon the generations reminds us of a highway along which the
retreating army has passed, leaving abandoned guns and silent cannon
with men dead and dying. Travelers from tropical Mexico describe
ruined cities and lovely villages away from which civilized men
journey, leaving temples and terraced gardens to moss and ivy. The
deserted valleys are rich in tropic fruits and the climate soft and
gentle. Yet Aztecs left the garden to journey northward into the
deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. Often for the soul paradise is not
before, but behind.

Shakespeare condenses all this in "King Lear." Avarice closes the
palace doors against the white-haired King. Greed pushes him into the
night to wander o'er the wasted moor, an exiled king, uncrowned and
uncared for. In such hours garden becomes desert. This is the drama
of man's life. The soul thirsts for sympathy. It hungers for love.
Baffled and broken it seeks a great heart. For the pilgrim multitudes
Moses was the shadow on a great rock in a weary land. For poor, hunted