I looked into his face, yet bearing the marks of recent trial and
suffering, and saw in it the morning dawn.

"Has it been so with you?" I asked.

"Yes; and it has always been so," he answered, without hesitation.
"It is painful to be under the surgeon's knife," he added. "We
shrink back, shivering, at the sight of his instruments. The flesh
is agonized. But when all is over, and the greedy tumor, or wasting
cancer, that was threatening life, is gone, we rejoice and are
glad."

He sighed, and looked sober for a little while, as thought went
back, and memory gave too vivid a realization of what had been, and
then resumed:

"I can see now, that what seemed to me, and is still regarded by
others as a great misfortune, was the best thing that could have
taken place. I have lost, but I have gained; and the gain is greater
than the loss. It has always been so. Out of every trouble or
disaster that has befallen me in life, I have come with a deep
conviction that my feet stumbled because they were turning into
paths that would lead my soul astray. However much I may love myself
and the world, however much I may seek my own, below all and above
all is the conviction that time is fleeting, and life here but as a
span, that if I compass the whole world, and lose my own soul, I
have made a fearful exchange. There are a great many things regarded
by business men as allowable. They are so common in trade, that
scarcely one man in a score questions their morality; so common,