e world, and there would be fewer single
women. If they only chose by sense or fancy, or because they saw some
good quality in a girl--if they were not all captivated by the face
alone, every Jill would have her Jack, and pair off happily, like the
lovers in a comedy. But it is not so. We can not live without illusions;
we can not, therefore, subsist without disappointments. They, too,
follow each other as the night the day, the shade the sunshine; they are
as inseparable as life and death.

The difference of our conditions alone places a variety in these
illusions; perhaps the lowest of us have the brightest, just as
Cinderella, sitting amongst the coals, dreamed of the ball and beautiful
prince as well as her sisters. "Bare and grim to tears," says Emerson,
"is the lot of the children I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hung
it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest
fortune, and would talk of 'the dear cottage where so many joyful hours
had flown.' Well, this thatching of hovels is the custom of the country.
Women, more than all, are the element and kingdom of illusion." Happy is
it that they are so. These fancies and illusions bring forth the
inevitable disappointments, but they carry life on with a swing. If
every hovel-born child had sat down at his doorstep, and taken true
stock of himself, and had said, "I am a poor miserable child, weak in
health, without knowledge, with little help, and can not do much," we
should have wanted many a hero. We should have had no Stephenson, no
Faraday, no Arkwright, and no Watt. Our railways would have been
unbuilt, and the Atlantic Ocean would have been unbridged by steam. But
hope, as phrenologists tells us, lies above caution, and has dangerous
and active neighbors--wit, imagination, language, ideality--so the poor
cottage is hung round with fancies, and the man exists to help his
fellows. He may fail; but others take up his tangled thread, and unravel
it, and carry on the great business of life.

The constantly cheerful man, who survives his blighted hopes and
disappointments, who takes them just for what they are--lessons, and
perhaps blessings in disguise--is the true hero. He is like a strong
swimmer; the waves dash over him, but he is never submerged. We can not
help applauding and admiring such a man; and the world, good-natured and
wise in its verdict, cheers him when he gains the goal. There may be
brutality in the sport, but there can be no