cares have in great measure deadened. But the disappointment
which has its seat in the affections is outgrown as the affections
themselves are outgrown, as the season of their predominance passes
away; and the disappointment which sinks the deepest and lasts the
longest of all the disappointments which are fanciful rather than
material, is that which reaches a man through his ambition and his
self-love,--principles in his nature which outlast the heyday of
the heart's supremacy, and which endure to man's latest years. The
bitter and the enduring disappointment to most human beings is that
which makes them feel, in one way or other, that they are less
wise, clever, popular, graceful, accomplished, tall, active, and in
short fine, than they had fancied themselves to be. But it is only
to a limited portion of human kind that such words as disappointment
and success are mainly suggestive of gratified or disappointed
ambition, of happy or blighted affection; to the great majority
they are suggestive rather of success or non-success in earning
bread and cheese, in finding money to pay the rent, in generally
making the ends meet. You are very young, my reader, and little
versed in the practical affairs of ordinary life, if you do not
know that such prosaic matters make to most men the great aim of
their being here, so far as that aim is bounded by this world's
horizon. The poor cabman is successful or is disappointed, according
as he sees, while the hours of the day are passing over, that he
is making up or not making up the shillings he must hand over to
his master at night, before he has a penny to get food for his wife
and children. The little tradesman is successful or the reverse,
according as he sees or does not see from week to week such a small
accumulation of petty profits as may pay his landlord, and leave a
little margin by help of which he and his family may struggle on.
And many an educated man knows the analogous feelings. The poor