admit; or who are looking for a harvest where they have
planted no seed. They carry the dreams of youth in among
the realities of the world, and its vanishing visions leave
them naked and discouraged. The light of romance, that
glorified all things in the future, recedes as they advance,
and they come upon rugged paths of fact --upon plain toil
and daily care, --upon the market and the field, and upon
men as they are in their weakness, and their selfishness,
and their mutual distrust. Or they belong, it may be, to
that class who are too highly charged with hope; whose
sanguine notions never go by induction, but by leaps; who
never calculate the difficulties, but only see the thing
complete and rounded in imagination; --men with plenty of
poetry, and no arithmetic; whose theories work miracles, but
whose attempts are failures. It is pleasant, sometimes, to
meet with people like these, who, clothed in the scantiest
garments, and with only a crust upon their tables, at the
least touch of suggestion, mount into a region of splendor.
Their poverty all fades away; -- the bare walls, the tokens
of stern want, the dusty world, are all transfigured with
infinite possibilities. Achievement is only a word, and
fortune comes in at a stride. The palace of beauty rises,
fruits bloom in waste places, gold drops from the rocks, and
the entire movement of life becomes a march of jubilee. And
they are so certain this time, --the plan they now have is
so sure to succeed! I repeat, it is pleasant, sometimes, to
have intercourse with such men, who throw bloom and
marvelousness upon the actualities of the world, from the
reservoirs of their sanguine invention. At least, it is
pleasant to think how this faculty of unfailing enthusiasm