e kindly glow into your countenance,
you would have been surrounded always as I generally am.' 'You're young,
says I, 'and you have had no experience; leastways, your experience has
not been human. You get stirred when you're low, and people tend you for
their own sakes--you ain't preyed upon by disappointments.'

"'Young!' said he; 'disappointments!' And, to my horror, he stood bolt
upright, to be impressive. 'Look you, Mr. Spruce, the youngest is the
wisest; the child remembers throughout years a happy day, and can forget
his tears as fast as they evaporate. He grows up, and his budding youth
imagines love. Two or three fancies commonly precede his love. As each
of these decays, he, in his inexperience, is eloquent about his blighted
hopes, his dead first love, and so on. In the first blossom of his
manhood, winds are keen to him--at his first plunge into the stream of
active life, he finds the water cold. Who shall condemn his shiver? But
if he is to be a healthy man, he will strike out right soon, and glow
with cheerful exercise in buffeting the stream. Youth, Mr. Spruce, may
be allowed to call the water of the world too cold, but so long only as
its plunge is recent. It is a libel on maturity and age to say that we
live longer to love less. Preyed upon by disappointments--'

"'Yes,' says I, 'preyed upon.'

"'Say, rather, blessed with trial. Who'd care to swim in a cork jacket!
Trouble is a privilege, believe me, friend, to those who know from whose
hand, for what purpose, it is sent. I do not mean the trouble people cut
out for themselves by curdling all the milk of kindness in their
neighbors. But when a man will be a man, will labor with Truth, Charity,
and Self-Reliance--always frank and open in his dealings--always giving
credit to his neighbors for their good deeds, and humbly abstaining from
a judgment of what looks like evil in their conduct--when he knows,
under God, no helper but his own brave heart, and his own untiring
hand--there is no disappointment in repulse. He learns the lesson Heaven
teaches him, his Faith, and Hope, and Charity, by constant active effort
became strong--gloriously strong--just as the blacksmith's right
arm becomes mighty by the constant wielding of his hammer.
Disappointment--let the coward pluck up courage--disappointment is a
sheet-and-pumpkin phantom to the bold. Let him who has battled side by
side with Trouble, say whether it was not an angel sent to be his help.
Find a tru