y complained to his
friends that they had killed him, not cured him, when they roused him
from his state of hallucination. There are some illusions so beautiful,
so healthful, and so pleasant, that we would that no harshness of this
world's ways, no bitter experience, no sad reality, could awaken us from
them. It is these, we fancy, that the poet tells us to trust to; such
are the illusions--so-called by the world--to which we are always to
give our faith. It will be well if we do so. Faith in man or woman is a
comfortable creed; but you will scarcely find a man of thirty, or a
woman either, who retains it. They will tell you bitterly "they have
been so deceived!" One old gentleman we know, deceived, and ever again
to be deceived, who is a prey to false friends, who lends his money
without surety and gets robbed, who fell in love and was jilted, who has
done much good and has been repaid with much evil. This man is much to
be envied. He can, indeed, "trust in his heart and what the world calls
illusions." To him the earth is yet green and fresh, the world smiling
and good-humored, friends are fast and loving, woman a very well-spring
of innocent and unbought love. The world thinks him an old simpleton;
but he is wiser than the world. He is not to be scared by sad proverbs,
nor frightened by dark sayings. An enviable man, he sits, in the evening
of life, loving and trusting his fellow-men, and, from the mere
freshness of his character, having many gathered round him whom he can
still love and trust.

With another sort of philosophers all around is mere illusion, and the
mind of man shall in no way be separated from it; from the beginning to
the end it is all the same. Our organization, they would have us
believe, creates most of our pleasure and our pain. Life is in itself an
ecstasy. "Life is as sweet as nitrous oxide; and the fisherman, dripping
all day over a cold pond, the switchman at the railway intersection, the
farmer in the field, the negro in the rice-swamp, the fop in the street,
the hunter in the woods, the barrister with the jury, the belle at the
ball--all ascribe a certain pleasure to their employment which they
themselves give to it. Health and appetite impart the sweetness to
sugar, bread, and meat." So fancy plays with us; but, while she tricks
us, she blesses us. The mere prosaic man, who strips the tinsel from
every thing, who sneers at a bridal and gladdens at a funeral; who tests
every coin and ever