to meet such a person, because one goes in the strength of that
heavenly meat many days and nights, knowing that life is worth
living to the uttermost, and that it can all be beautiful and lofty
and gracious; but the way to miss it, to lose that fine sense, is
to have some dull and definite design of one's own, which makes one
treat all the hours in which one cannot pursue it, but as the dirt
and debris of a quarry. One must not, I see, wait for the golden
moments of life, because there are no moments that are not golden,
if one can but pierce into their essence. Yet how is one to realise
this, to put it into practice? I have of late, in my vacuous mood,
fallen into the dark error of thinking of the weary hours as of
things that must be just lived through, and endured, and beguiled,
if possible, until the fire again fall. But life is a larger and a
nobler business than that; and one learns the lesson sooner, if one
takes the suffering home to one's soul, not as a tedious interlude,
but as the very melody and march of life itself, even though it
crash into discords, or falter in a sombre monotony.

The point is that when one seems to be playing a part to one's own
satisfaction, when one appears to oneself to be brilliant,
suggestive, inspiriting, and genial, one is not necessarily
ministering to other people; while, on the other hand, when one is
dull, troubled, and anxious, out of heart and discontented, one may
have the chance of making others happier. Here is a whimsical
instance; in one of my dreariest days--I was in London on business--
I sate next to an old friend, generally a very lively, brisk, and
cheerful man, who appeared to me strangely silent and depressed. I
led him on to talk freely, and he told me a long tale of anxieties
and cares; his health was unsatisfactory, his plans promised ill.
In trying to paint a brighter picture, to reassure and encourage