enables them to bear defeat, and to look away from the cold
face of necessity; -- to think that, while so many are
trudging after the sounding wheels and the monotonous jar of
life, and lying down by the way to die, these men are
marching buoyantly to a tune inside. And yet this is
pleasant only from a hasty point of view. These people meet
with disappointment, of course; and it is sad to think how
many lives have come to absolutely nothing, and are all
strewn over, from boyhood to the grave, with the fragments
of splendid schemes. It is sad to think how all their
visionary Balbecs and Palmyras have been reared in a real
desert, -- the desert of an existence producing no
substantial thing. And among these vanishing dreams, and on
that melancholy waste, they learn, at last, the meaning of
their disappointment. And. from their experience, we too
may learn, that we are placed here to be not merely ideal
artists, but actual toilers; not cadets of hope, but
soldiers of endeavor.

But there are disappointments in life that succeed reasonable
expectation; and these are the hardest of all to bear. I say
the expectation is reasonable; and yet, very possibly, the
bitterness of the disappointment comes from neglecting to
consider the infirmity of all earthly things. It is hard
when, not dreaming, but trying our best, we fail. It is hard
to bear the burden and heat of the day, through all life's
prime, and yet, with all our toil, to earn no repose for its
evening hours. It is hard to accumulate a little gain,
baptizing every dollar with our honest sweat, and then have
it stricken from our grasp by the band of calamity or of