got out of it, in spite of all that people say. Youth is sweet, with its
fiery enterprise, and I suppose mature manhood will be just as much so,
though in a calmer way, and age, quieter still, will have its own
merits,--the thing is only to do with life what we ought, and what is
suited to each of its stages; do all, enjoy all,--and I suppose these two
rules amount to the same thing. Only catch real earnest hold of life, not
play with it, and not defer one part of it for the sake of another, then
each part of life will do for us what was intended. People talk of the
hardships of military service, of the miseries that we undergo fighting
for our country. I have undergone my share, I believe,--hard toil in the
wilderness, hunger, extreme weariness, pinching cold, the torture of a
wound, peril of death; and really I have been as happy through it as ever
I was at my mother's cosey fireside of a winter's evening. If I had died,
I doubt not my last moments would have been happy. There is no use of
life, but just to find out what is fit for us to do; and, doing it, it
seems to be little matter whether we live or die in it. God does not want
our work, but only our willingness to work; at least, the last seems to
answer all his purposes."

"This is a comfortable philosophy of yours," said Septimius, rather
contemptuously, and yet enviously. "Where did you get it, Robert?"

"Where? Nowhere; it came to me on the march; and though I can't say that I
thought it when the bullets pattered into the snow about me, in those
narrow streets of Quebec, yet, I suppose, it was in my mind then; for, as
I tell you, I was very cheerful and contented. And you, Septimius? I never
saw such a discontented, unhappy-looking fellow as you are. You have had a
harder time in peace than I in war. You have not found what you seek,
whatever that may be. Take my advice. Give yourself to the next work that
comes to hand. The war offers place to all of us; we ought to be