reach a certain place which some one you know has held for twenty
years. You look at him with much curiosity; he appears very much
like yourself; and, curiously, he does not appear particularly happy.
Oh, reader, whatever you do--though last week he gained without an
effort what you have been wishing for all your life--do not hate
him. Resolve that you will love and wish well to the man who fairly
succeeded where you fairly failed. Go to him and get acquainted
with him: if you and he are both true men, you will not find it a
difficult task to like him. It is perhaps asking too much of human
nature to ask you to do all this in the case of the man who has
carried off the woman you loved; but as regards anything else, do
it all. Go to your successful rival, heartily congratulate him.
Don't be Jesuitical; don't merely felicitate the man; put down the
rising feeling of envy: that is always out-and-out wrong. Don't
give it a moment's quarter. You clerks in an office, ready to be
angry with a fellow-clerk who gets the chance of a trip to Scotland
on business, don't give in to the feeling. Shake hands with him
all round, and go in a body with him to Euston Square, and give
him three cheers as he departs by the night mail. And you, greater
mortals--you, rector of a beautiful parish, who think you would have
done for a bishop as well as the clergyman next you who has got the
mitre; you, clever barrister, sure some day to be solicitor-general,
though sore to-day because a man next door has got that coveted
post before you; go and see the successful man--go forthwith,
congratulate him heartily, say frankly you wish it had been you:
it will do oreat good both to him and to yourself. Let it not be
that envy--that bitter and fast-growing fiend--shall be suffered
in your heart for one minute. When I was at college I sat on the
same bench with a certain man. We were about the same age. Now, I
am a country parson, and he is a cabinet minister. Oh, how he has