the other has but time to make one gesture and give one
passionate cry; and they are all the things of a moment. When
the generation is gone, when the play is over, when the thirty
years' panorama has been withdrawn in tatters from the stage
of the world, we may ask what has become of these great,
weighty, and undying loves, and the sweet-hearts who despised
mortal conditions in a fine credulity; and they can only show
us a few songs in a bygone taste, a few actions worth
remembering, and a few children who have retained some happy
stamp from the disposition of their parents.


IV. - TRUTH OF INTERCOURSE


AMONG sayings that have a currency in spite of being
wholly false upon the face of them for the sake of a half-
truth upon another subject which is accidentally combined with
the error, one of the grossest and broadest conveys the
monstrous proposition that it is easy to tell the truth and
hard to tell a lie. I wish heartily it were. But the truth
is one; it has first to be discovered, then justly and exactly
uttered. Even with instruments specially contrived for such a
purpose - with a foot rule, a level, or a theodolite - it is
not easy to be exact; it is easier, alas! to be inexact. From
those who mark the divisions on a scale to those who measure
the boundaries of empires or the distance of the heavenly
stars, it is by careful method and minute, unwearying
attention that men rise even to material exactness or to sure
knowledge even of external and constant things. But it is