He was seen to take his hat off, and raise his hands once more to
Heaven, while he looked down upon all he loved and left; and then he
turned his sorrowful face again toward that distant land--and they saw
him no more!



CHAPTER IV.

THE world is full of trouble.

While we are young we do not see how true this ancient homely saying
is.

That wonderful dramatic prologue, the first chapter of Job, is but a
great condensation of the sorrows that fall like hail upon many a
mortal house. Job's black day, like the day of the poetic prophets--
the true _sacri vates_ of the ancient world--is a type of a year--a
bitter human year. It is terrible how quickly a human landscape all
gilded meadow, silver river and blue sky can cloud and darken.

George Fielding had compared himself this very day to an oak tree,
"Even so am I rooted to my native soil." His fate accepted his simile.
The oak of centuries yields to an impalpable antagonist, whose very
name stands in proverbs for weakness and insignificance. This thin,
light trifle, rendered impetuous by motion, buffets the king of the
forest, tears his roots with fury out of the earth, and lays his
towering head in the dust; and even so circumstances, none of them
singly irresistible, converging to one point, buffeted sore another
oak pride of our fields, and, for aught I know, of our whole