u are scarcely hurt; you have fallen into
a turnip-field, and the honest fellow, who is hoeing away near, comes
kindly to your aid, and, in good Samaritan fashion, bathes your temples
and restores you. When you leave him at last, you go forth with a
kindlier notion of human nature; you recognize the tie "that makes the
whole world kin," and you seem to think that hard toil hardens not the
heart, nor a life of labor shuts out generous sympathies,--the lesson is
a life one. But suppose that in your fall you alight on a bed of choice
tulips, you descend in the midst of a rich parterre of starry anemones,
and that your first conscious struggles are met with words of anger and
reproach; instead of sorrow for your suffering, you hear sarcasms
on your horsemanship, and insults on your riding,--no sympathy, no
kindness, no generous anxiety for your safety, but all that irritate and
offend,--more thought, in fact, for the petals of a flower than for the
ligaments of your knee,--then, too, is the lesson a life one, and
its fruits will be bitter memories for many a year. The events of our
existence are in reality nothing, save in our treatment of them. By
Blondel, I recognized one of those suggestive influences which mould
fate by moulding temperament. The deep reflecting German saw this: it
was clear _he_ knew that in that animal was typified all that his life
might become. Why should not I contest the prize with him? Blondel was
charged with another destiny as well as his.

I turned once more to the letter, but I could not bear to read it; so
many were the impertinent allusions to myself, my manner, my appearance,
and my conversation. Still more insulting were the speculations as to
what class or condition I belonged to. "He puzzled us completely," wrote
the priest, "for while unmistakably vulgar in many things, there were
certain indications of reading and education about him that refuted the
notion of his being what Keldrum thought,--an escaped counter-jumper!
The Guardsman insisted he was a valet; my own impression was, the fellow
had kept a small circulating library, and gone mad with the three-volume
novels. At all events, I have given him a lesson which, whether
profitable or not to _him_, has turned out tolerably well for _me_,
If ever you chance to hear of him,--his name was Podder or Pedder, I
think,--pray let me know, for my curiosity is still unslaked about him."
He thence went off to a sort of descriptive catalogue of