_Their constancy was mine_. This verse has often been accused of
violating sense; but, however artificial the expression may be, neither
the sense is obscure, nor the way of expressing it inaccurate. It
is evidently only another way of saying "in the little they had of
constancy they resembled me as they resembled him in their charms."]




* * * * *




DR. ARNOLD.


We listened, as all boys in their better moods will listen (ay, and men
too, for the matter of that), to a man whom we felt to be, with all his
heart and soul and strength, striving against whatever was mean and
unmanly and unrighteous in our little world. It was not the cold, clear
voice of one giving advice and warning from serene heights to those who
were struggling and sinning below, but the warm, living voice of one who
was fighting for us, and by our sides, and calling on us to help him and
ourselves and one another. And so, wearily and little by little, but
surely and steadily on the whole, was brought home to the young boy,
for the first time, the meaning of his life: that it was no fool's
or sluggard's paradise into which he had wandered by chance, but a