the very choicest parterres of our minds and hearts, it thrives among
the buds and blossoms of men's intellects, and abounds above all among
the flowers and fruits of his affections; it is indigenous to both
soils, and no toiler, however industrious or persevering, has ever yet
succeeded in subduing its ravages.

It is no wonder then that we sometimes go on a wild-goose chase after
pleasure; it is not surprising that the wisest of us make foolish
attempts to grasp the will-o'-the-wisp that has been coaxing and
deceiving men for centuries. It is surprising that our persistent
self-confidence persuades our better sense that where countless
generations of pleasure-seekers have failed we can hope to succeed.

This parenthetical deviation is the fruit of my deep reflections
concerning this early period of my development; it is the web which
the deft fingers of my memory have woven around many a quiet reverie;
the substance of many a fire side cogitation, the phantoms of many a
twilight's dreaming.

I doubt not, that in that world of speculative opinions and
questionings, I have met the kindred spirits of many of my fellow
beings, clad in the ideal personality with which my thought invests
people, at the cross of those four great roads towards which, from all
corners of the earth, the spirits of mankind come trooping. We have
only to close our lids upon our external surroundings and swift as
thought itself is our passage into that fairy land of our reverie.

As early as my tenth year I had begun to build castles in the open
fire and to people the gloaming with whispering shadows; somehow the
habit has grown with me through all these years, with this difference,