ly torn
from us, and we go sorrowing for lost treasure. But these things fall
off from us naturally; we do not give them up. We are never called
upon to give them up.

There is no pang, no sorrow, no wrenching away of a part of
our lives. The baby lies in his cradle and plays with his fingers and
toes. There comes an hour when his fingers and toes no longer afford
him amusement. He has attained to the dignity of a rattle, a whip, a
ball. Has he suffered a loss? Has he not rather made a great gain?
When he passed from his toes to his toys, did he do it mournfully?
Does he look at his little feet and hands with a sigh for the joys that
once loitered there but are now forever gone? Does he not rather feel
a little ashamed, when you remind him of those days? Does he not feel
that it trenches somewhat on his dignity? Yet the regret of maturity
for its past joys amounts to nothing less than this. Such regret is
regret that we cannot lie in the sunshine and play with our toes,--that
we are no longer but one remove, or but few removes, from the idiot.
Away with such folly! Every season of life has its distinctive and
appropriate enjoyments, which bud and blossom and ripen and fall off as
the season glides on to its close, to be succeeded by others better and
brighter. There is no consciousness of loss, for there is no loss.
There is only a growing up, and out of; and beyond.

Life does turn out differently from what was anticipated. It is an
infinitely higher and holier and happier thing than our childhood
fancied. The world that lay before us then was but a tinsel toy to the
world which our firm feet tread. We have entered into the undiscovered
land. We have explored its ways of pleasantness, its depths of dole,
its mountains of difficulty, its valleys of delight, and, behold! it is
very good. Storms have swept fiercely, but they swept to purify. We
have heard in its thunders the Voice that woke once the echoes of the
Garden. Its lightnings have riven a path for the Angel of Peace.

Manhood discovers what childhood can never divine,--that the sorrows of
life are superficial, and the happiness of life structural; and this
knowledge alone is enough to give a peace which passeth understanding.

Yes, the dreams of youth were dreams, but the waking was more glorious
than they. They were only dreams,--fitful, flitting, fragmentary
visions of the coming day. The shallow joys, the capricious pleasures,
the wave