to me that the great and beautiful principle of
compensation is more clearly seen in the distribution and effects of
time than in anything else within the scope of our experience. The good
use of one opportunity very frequently compensates us for the absence of
another, and it does so because opportunity is itself so dependent upon
time that, although the best opportunities may apparently be presented
to us, we can make no use of them unless we are able to give them the
time that they require. You, who have the best possible opportunities
for culture, find a certain sadness and disappointment because you
cannot avail yourself of all of them; but the truth is, that opportunity
only exists for us just so far as we are able to make use of it, and our
power to do so is often nothing but a question of time. If our days are
well employed we are sure to have done some good thing which we should
have been compelled to neglect if we had been occupied about anything
else. Hence every genuine worker has rich compensations which ought to
console him amply for his shortcomings, and to enable him to meet
comparisons without fear.

Those who aspire to the intellectual life, but have no experience of its
difficulties, very frequently envy men so favorably situated as you are.
It seems to them that all the world's knowledge is accessible to you,
and that you have simply to cull its fruits as we gather grapes in a
vineyard. They forget the power of Time, and the restrictions which Time
imposes. "This _or_ that, not this _and_ that," is the rule to which all
of us have to submit, and it strangely equalizes the destinies of men.
The time given to the study of one thing is withdrawn from the study of
another, and the hours of the day are limited alike for all of us. How
difficult it is to reconcile the interests of our different pursuits!
Indeed it seems like a sort of polygamy to _have_ different pursuits.
It is natural to think of them as jealous wives tormenting some Mormon
prophet.

There is great danger in apparently unlimited opportunities, and a
splendid compensation for those who are confined by circumstances to a
narrow but fruitful field. The Englishman gets more civilization out of
a farm and a garden than the Red Indian out of the space encircled by
his horizon. Our culture gains in thoroughness what it loses in extent.

This consideration goes far to explain the fact that although our
ancestors were so much less favorably sit