thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and
for every thing you gain, you lose something. If riches
increase, they are increased that use them. If the gatherer
gathers too much, Nature takes out of the man what she puts
into his chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner.
Nature hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves of the sea
do not more speedily seek a level from their loftiest tossing
than the varieties of condition tend to equalize themselves.
There is always some levelling circumstance that puts down
the overbearing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate,
substantially on the same ground with all others. Is a man
too strong and fierce for society and by temper and position
a bad citizen,--a morose ruffian, with a dash of the pirate
in him?--Nature sends him a troop of pretty sons and daughters
who are getting along in the dame's classes at the village
school, and love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to
courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the granite and
felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb in and keeps
her balance true.

The farmer imagines power and place are fine things. But
the President has paid dear for his White House. It has
commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly
attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an
appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust
before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.
Or, do men desire the more substantial and permanent
grandeur of genius? Neither has this an immunity. He who
by force of will or of thought is great and overlooks
thousands, has the charges of that eminence. With every