quest of visionary gain.

Here is, no doubt, the reason why a man, after the period of his
boyhood, or first youth, makes so few friends. Want and ambition (new
acquaintances which are introduced to him along with his beard) thrust
away all other society from him. Some old friends remain, it is true,
but these are become as a habit--a part of your selfishness; and,
for new ones, they are selfish as you are. Neither member of the new
partnership has the capital of affection and kindly feeling, or can even
afford the time that is requisite for the establishment of the new firm.
Damp and chill the shades of the prison-house begin to close round
us, and that "vision splendid" which has accompanied our steps in our
journey daily farther from the east, fades away and dies into the light
of common day.

And what a common day! what a foggy, dull, shivering apology for light
is this kind of muddy twilight through which we are about to tramp and
flounder for the rest of our existence, wandering farther and farther
from the beauty and freshness and from the kindly gushing springs of
clear gladness that made all around us green in our youth! One wanders
and gropes in a slough of stock-jobbing, one sinks or rises in a storm
of politics, and in either case it is as good to fall as to rise--to
mount a bubble on the crest of the wave, as to sink a stone to the
bottom.

The reader who has seen the name affixed to the head of this article
scarcely expected to be entertained with a declamation upon ingratitude,
youth, and the vanity of human pursuits, which may seem at first sight
to have little to do with the subject in hand. But (although we reserve
the privilege of discoursing upon whatever subject shall suit us, and by