this, that matters
will not turn as you feel sure they will. And, even for this reason,
you, who are thinking of suicide because trade is declining, speculation
failing, bankruptcy impending, or your life going to be blighted forever
by unrequited love--DON'T DO IT. Whether you are English, American,
French, or German, listen to a man that knows what is what, and DON'T DO
IT. I tell you none of those horrors, when they really come, will affect
you as you fancy they will. The joys we expect are not a quarter
so bright, nor the troubles half so dark as we think they will be.
Bankruptcy coming is one thing, come is quite another: and no heart
or life was ever really blighted at twenty years of age. The love-sick
girls that are picked out of the canal alive, all, without exception,
marry another man, have brats, and get to screech with laughter when
they think of sweetheart No. 1, generally a blockhead, or else a
blackguard, whom they were fools enough to wet their clothes for, let
alone kill their souls. This happens INVARIABLY. The love-sick girls
that are picked out of the canal dead have fled from a year's misery
to eternal pain, from grief that time never failed to cure, to anguish
incurable. In this world "Rien n'est certain que l'imprevu."

Edouard and Rose were tender lovers, at a distance. How much happier and
more loving they thought they should be beneath the same roof. They came
together: their prominent faults of character rubbed: the secret
that was in the house did its work: and altogether, they quarrelled.
L'imprevu.

Dard had been saying to Jacintha for ever so long, "When granny dies, I
will marry you."

Granny died. Dard took possession of her little property. Up came a
glittering official, and turned him out; he was not her heir. Perrin,
the notary, was. He had bought the inheritance of her two sons, long
since dead.

Dard had not only looked on the cottage and cow, as his, but had spoken
of them as such for years. The disappointment and the irony of comrades
ate into him.

"I will leave this cursed place," said he.

Josephine instantly sent for him to Beaurepaire. He came, and was
factotum with the novelty of a fixed salary. Jacintha accommodated him
with a new little odd job or two. She set him to dance on the oak floors
with a brush fastened to his right foot; and, after a rehearsal or two,
she made him wait at table. Didn't he bang the things about: and when
he brought a lady a dish, and she