ery much like the surveyor's
triangulation of a geographical province. We get a base-line in
organization, always; then we get an angle by sighting some distant
object to which the passions or aspirations of the subject of our
observation are tending; then another;--and so we construct our first
triangle. Once fix a man's ideals, and for the most part the rest is
easy. A wants to die worth half a million. Good. B (female) wants to
catch him,--and outlive him. All right. Minor details at our leisure.

What is it, of all your experiences, of all your thoughts, of all your
misdoings, that lies at the very bottom of the great heap of acts of
consciousness which make up your past life? What should you most dislike
to tell your nearest friend?--Be so good as to pause for a brief space,
and shut the volume you hold with your finger between the pages.--Oh,
that is it!

What a confessional I have been sitting at, with the inward ear of my
soul open, as the multitudinous whisper of my involuntary confidants
came back to me like the reduplicated echo of a cry among the craggy
bills!

At the house of a friend where I once passed the night was one of those
stately upright cabinet desks and cases of drawers which were not rare
in prosperous families during the last century. It had held the clothes
and the books and the papers of generation after generation. The hands
that opened its drawers had grown withered, shrivelled, and at last been
folded in death. The children that played with the lower handles had
got tall enough to open the desk, to reach the upper shelves behind the
folding-doors,--grown bent after a while,--and then followed those
who had gone before, and left the old cabinet to be ransacked by a new
generation.

A boy of ten or twelve was looking at it a few years ago, and, being a
quick-witted fellow, saw that all the space was not accounted for by the
smaller drawers in the part beneath the lid of the desk. Prying about
with busy eyes and fingers, he at length came upon a spring, on pressing
which, a secret drawer flew from its hiding-place. It had never been
opened but by the maker. The mahogany shavings and dust were lying in it
as when the artisan closed it,--and when I saw it, it was as fresh as if
that day finished.

Is there not one little drawer in your soul, my sweet reader, which no
hand but yours has ever opened, and which none that have known you
seem to have suspected? What does it hold?--A sin?--I ho