hing of the trials that beset
yours--doubt, distrust, despondency. I have health, mental and physical
activity, and a "mounting spirit" of indomitable enjoyment that
buoyantly protects me from sufferings under which others wince and
writhe; nevertheless, I have the sufferings proper to my individuality,
and I needs must suffer, if it were only that I may be said to _live_,
in the fit and proper sense of the term. Our lots are just; by God they
are appointed....

But in spite of abiding sorrow, I have often hours of vivid enjoyment,
enjoyment which has nothing to do with happiness, or peace, or hope;
momentary flashes, bright gleams of exquisite pleasure, of which the
capacity seems indestructible in my nature; and whatever bitterness may
lie at my heart's core, it still leaves about it a mobile surface of
sensibility, which reflects with a sort of ecstasy every ray of light
and every form of beauty.

You certainly do not enjoy as I do, and perhaps therefore you do not
suffer as acutely; but we err in nothing more than in our estimate of
each other's natures, and might more profitably spend the same amount of
consideration upon our own lot, and its capabilities of sorrow or of joy
for our own improvement.

Why is it that people do perpetually live below their own pitch? as you
very truly described their living. My return to civilized society makes
me ponder much upon the causes of the desperate frivolity and dismal
inanity which calls itself by that name, and in the midst of which we
live and move and have our being. If people did really enjoy and amuse
themselves, nothing could be better; because enjoyment and amusement
_are_ great goods, and deserve to be labored for _sufficiently_; but the
absence of amusement, of enjoyment, of life, of spirits, of vivacity, of
_vitality_, in the society of the present day, and its so-called
diversions, strikes me with astonishment and compassion. For my own
part, I hold a good laugh to be inestimable in pleasure and in profit;
good nonsense well talked only less admirable than good sense well
delivered; and a spirit of fun the next best thing to a serious spirit;
and moreover, thank God, they are quite compatible! I think the stupid
shallowness of society has some deep causes; one among which is, of
course, that by devoting all their energies and all their faculties and
all their time to mere amusement, as they have no right to do, people
fail of their aim, and are neither well am