with dreadful vigor.

I find it a great aid to recall what I can of bygone beautiful
associations, and then sleep on them with a resolve that they shall
recur in complete condition. He who will thus resolutely clean up his
past life and clear away from it all sorrow _as well as he can_, and
refurnish it with beautiful memories, or make it better, _coûte que
coûte_, will do himself more good than many a doleful moral adviser
ever dreamed of. This is what I mean by _self-fascination_--the
making, as it were, by magic art, one's own past and self more
charming than we ever deemed it possible to be. We thus fascinate
ourselves. Those who believe that everything which is bygone has gone
to the devil are in a wretched error. The future is based on the
past--yes, made from it, and that which _was_ never dies, but returns
to bless or grieve. We mostly wrong our past bitterly, and bitterly
does it revenge itself. But it is like the lion of ANDROCLES, it
remembers those who treat it kindly. "And lo! when ANDROCLES was
thrown to the lion to be devoured, the beast lay down at his feet, and
licked his hands." Yes, we have all our lions!

_To master difficult meanings_. It has often befallen me, when I was
at the University, or later when studying law, to exert my mind to
grasp, and all in vain, some problem in mathematics or a puzzling
legal question, or even to remember some refractory word in a foreign
language which would _not_ remain in the memory. After a certain
amount of effort in many of these cases, further exertion is
injurious, the mind or receptive power seems to be seized--as if
nauseated--with spasmodic rejections. In such a case pass the question
by, but on going to bed, think it over and _will_ to understand it on
the morrow. It will often suffice to merely desire that it shall recur