grey. We come, if we are sensible folk, to be content with what we
can get, though we have not what we could wish.

Still, there are certain cases in which this can hardly be so. A
man of sense can bear cheerfully the frustration of the romantic
fancies of childhood and youth; but not many are so philosophical
in regard to the comparatively reasonable anticipations of more
reasonable years. When you got married at five-and-forty, your
hopes were not extravagant. You knew quite well you were not winning
the loveliest of her sex, and indeed you felt you had no right to
expect to do so. You were well aware that in wisdom, knowledge,
accomplishment, amiability, you could not reasonably look for more
than the average of the race. But you thought you might reasonably
look for that: and now, alas, alas! you find you have not got it.
How have I pitied a worthy and sensible man, listening to his wife
making a fool of herself before a large company of people! How
have I pitied such a one, when I heard his wife talking the most
idiotical nonsense; or when I saw her flirting scandalously with
a notorious scapegrace; or learned of the large parties which she
gave in his absence, to the discredit of her own character and the
squandering of his hard-earned gains! No habit, no philosophy, will
ever reconcile a human being of right feeling to such a disappointment
as that. And even a sadder thing than this--one of the saddest
things in life--is when a man begins to feel that his whole life is
a failure; not merely a failure as compared with the vain fancies
of youth, but a failure as compared with his sobered convictions of
what he ought to have been and what he might have been. Probably,
in a desponding mood, we have all known the feeling; and even when
we half knew it was morbid and transient, it was a very painful
one. But painful it must be beyond all names of pain, where it is