nging merrily and rejoicing in
sympathy with the mystic song of the birds; there is so much space
around him--the very breath of life is a joy--and he is content to taste
in glorious idleness the ecstasy of living. The evening closes in, and
then the horizon seems to be narrowing; like the walls of the deadly
chamber in the home of the Inquisition, the skies shrink inward--and the
youth has misgivings. The next day finds his plain shrunken a little in
expanse, and his horizon has not so superb a sweep. Nevertheless he goes
gaily on, and once more he raises his voice joyously, and tries to think
that the plain and the horizon can contract no more. Thus in foolish
hopefulness he passes his days until the glorious plain of his dreams
has been traversed, and, lo, under his very feet is the great gulf
fixed, and far below the tide--the tide of Eternity--laps sullenly
against the walls of the deadly chasm. If the youth knew that the gulf
and the rolling river were so near--if he not only knew, but could
absolutely picture his doom--would he be so merry? Ah, no!

I repeat that, if men could be so disciplined as to believe in their
souls that death must come, then there would be no lost days. Is there
one of us who can say that he never lost a day amid this too brief, too
joyous, too entrancing term of existence? Not one. The aged Roman--who,
by-the-way, was somewhat of a prig--used to go about moaning, "I have
lost a day," if he thought he had not performed some good action or
learned something in the twenty-four hours. Most of us have no such
qualms; we waste the time freely; and we never know that it is wasted
until with a dull shock we comprehend that all must be left and that the
squandered hours can never be retrieved. The men who are strongest and
greatest and best suffer the acutest remorse for the lost days; they
know their own powers, and that very knowledge makes them suffer all the
more bitterly when they reckon up what they might have done and compare
it with the sum of their actual achievement.

In a certain German town a little cell is shown on the walls of which a
famous name is marked many times. It appears that in his turbulent youth
Prince Bismarck was often a prisoner in this cell; and his various
appearances are registered under eleven different dates. Moreover, I
observe from the same rude register that he fought twenty-eight duels.
Lost days--lost days! He tells us how he drank in the usual insane
fashio