e, and the flower-painting, and the
songs about never leaving off dancing, Ta ra la! and were as happy as
the week was long. I occasionally wished I could venture to hint to Miss
Lavinia, that she treated the darling of my heart a little too much like
a plaything; and I sometimes awoke, as it were, wondering to find that
I had fallen into the general fault, and treated her like a plaything
too--but not often.

CHAPTER 42. MISCHIEF

I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this manuscript
is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at that tremendous
short-hand, and all improvement appertaining to it, in my sense of
responsibility to Dora and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have
already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a
patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me,
and which I know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any
strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my
success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have
worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could
have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order,
and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one
object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon
its heels, which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit
of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine,
in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man
indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents
neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted
feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I
do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My
meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have
tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself
to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in
small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed
it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from
the companionship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and
hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this
earth. Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the
two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of t