o say that there is no moral good which has not to be paid
for in coin of the realm.

"Poverty," said Johnson again, "is so great an evil, and pregnant with so
much temptation, so much misery, that I cannot but earnestly enjoin you
to avoid it."

For my own part, I needed no injunction to that effort of avoidance. Many
a London garret knows how I struggled with the unwelcome chamber-fellow.
I marvel she did not abide with me to the end; it is a sort of
inconsequence in Nature, and sometimes makes me vaguely uneasy through
nights of broken sleep.

VI.

How many more springs can I hope to see? A sanguine temper would say ten
or twelve; let me dare to hope humbly for five or six. That is a great
many. Five or six spring-times, welcomed joyously, lovingly watched from
the first celandine to the budding of the rose; who shall dare to call it
a stinted boon? Five or six times the miracle of earth reclad, the
vision of splendour and loveliness which tongue has never yet described,
set before my gazing. To think of it is to fear that I ask too much.

VII.

"Homo animal querulum cupide suis incumbens miseriis." I wonder where
that comes from. I found it once in Charron, quoted without reference,
and it has often been in my mind--a dreary truth, well worded. At least,
it was a truth for me during many a long year. Life, I fancy, would very
often be insupportable, but for the luxury of self-compassion; in cases
numberless, this it must be that saves from suicide. For some there is
great relief in talking about their miseries, but such gossips lack the
profound solace of misery nursed in silent brooding. Happily, the trick
with me has never been retrospective; indeed, it was never, even with
regard to instant suffering, a habit so deeply rooted as to become a
mastering vice. I knew my own weakness when I yielded to it; I despised
myself when it brought me comfort; I could laugh scornfully, even "cupide
meis incumbens miseriis." And now, thanks be to the unknown power which
rules us, my past has buried its dead. More than that; I can accept with
sober cheerfulness the necessity of all I lived through. So it was to
be; so it was. For this did Nature shape me; with what purpose, I shall
never know; but, in the sequence of things eternal, this was my place.

Could I have achieved so much philosophy if, as I ever feared, the
closing years of my life had passed in helpless indigence? Should I not
hav