truant, not yet aspiring
enough to be a good schoolboy. Yet in his folly there is a meaning;
add thought and culture to his independence, and he will be a man of
might: he is not a creature without hope, like the thick-skinned dandy
of the class first specified.

The artists form a class by themselves. Yet among them, though seeking
special aims by special means, may also be found the lineaments of
these two classes, as well as of the third, of which I am now to
speak.

This is that of the thinking American,--a man who, recognizing the
immense advantage of being born to a new world and on a virgin soil,
yet does not wish one seed from the past to be lost. He is anxious to
gather and carry back with him every plant that will bear a new
climate and new culture. Some will dwindle; others will attain a bloom
and stature unknown before. He wishes to gather them clean, free from
noxious insects, and to give them a fair trial in his new world. And
that he may know the conditions under which he may best place them in
that new world, he does not neglect to study their history in this.

The history of our planet in some moments seems so painfully mean and
little,--such terrible bafflings and failures to compensate some
brilliant successes; such a crushing of the mass of men beneath the
feet of a few, and these too often the least worthy; such a small drop
of honey to each cup of gall, and in many cases so mingled that it is
never one moment in life purely tasted; above all, so little achieved
for humanity as a whole, such tides of war and pestilence intervening
to blot out the traces of each triumph,--that no wonder if the
strongest soul sometimes pauses aghast; no wonder if the many
indolently console themselves with gross joys and frivolous prizes.
Yes! those men _are_ worthy of admiration, who can carry this cross
faithfully through fifty years; it is a great while for all the
agonies that beset a lover of good, a lover of men; it makes a soul
worthy of a speedier ascent, a more productive ministry in the next
sphere. Blessed are they who ever keep that portion of pure, generous
love with which they began life! How blessed those who have deepened
the fountains, and have enough to spare for the thirst of others! Some
such there are; and feeling that, with all the excuses for failure,
still only the sight of those who triumph gives a meaning to life or
makes its pangs endurable, we must arise and follow.

A CHARACTER