men take to gardening and farming; and capital things they are.
But when disappointment is extreme, it will paralyse you so that
you will suffer the weeds to grow up all about you, without your
having the heart to set your mind to the work of having the place
made neat. The state of a man's garden is a very delicate and
sensitive test as to whether he is keeping hopeful and well-to-do.
It is to me a very sad sight to see a parsonage getting a dilapidated
look, and the gravel walks in its garden growing weedy. The parson
must be growing old and poor. The parishioners tell you how trim
and orderly everything was when he came first to the parish. But
his affairs have become embarrassed, or his wife and children are
dead; and though still doing his duty well, and faithfully, he has
lost heart and interest in these little matters; and so things are
as you see.

I have been amused by the way in which some people meet disappointment.
They think it a great piece of worldly wisdom to deny that they
have ever been disappointed at all. Perhaps it might be so, if the
pretext were less transparent than it is. An old lady's son is
plucked at an examination for a civil appointment. She takes up
the ground that it is rather a credit to be plucked; that nearly
everybody is plucked; that all the cleverest fellows are plucked;
and that only stupid fellows are allowed to pass. When the
examiners find a clever man, they take a pleasure in plucking him.
A number of the cleverest men in England can easily put out a lad
of one-and-twenty. Then, shifting her ground, she declares the
examination was ridiculously easy: her son was rejected because he
could not tell what two and two amount to: because he did not know
the name of the river on which London is built: because he did not
(in his confusion) know his own name. She shows you the indignant