PIIILLIDA AND CORIDON. 107 



upon comfort, nor yet upon safety. The essen- 

 tial matter is that the heart be engaged. Then, 

 though we be toiling up the Matterhorn, or 

 swept along in the rush of a bayonet charge, 

 we may still find existence not only endurable, 

 but in the highest degree exhilarating. On 

 the other hand, if there is no longer anything 

 we care for ; if enthusiasm is dead, and hope 

 also, then, though we have all that money can 

 buy, suicide is perhaps the only fitting action 

 that is left for us, — unless, perchance, we are 

 still able to pass the time in writing treatises to 

 prove that everybody else ought to be as un- 

 happy as ourselves. 



Birds have many enemies and their full share 

 of privation, but I do not believe that they of- 

 ten suffer from ennui. Having '* neither store- 

 house nor barn," ^ they are never in want of 

 something to do. From sunrise till noon there 

 is the getting of breakfast, then from noon till 

 sunset the getting of dinner, — both out-of- 

 doors, and without any trouble of cookery or 

 dishes, — a kind of perpetual picnic. What 



1 The shrike lays up grasshoppers and sparrows, and the Cali- 

 fornia woodpecker hoards great numbers of acorns, but it is still 

 in dispute, I believe, whether thrift is the motive with either of 

 them. Considering what has often been done in similar cases, we 

 may think it surprising that the Scripture text above quoted (to- 

 gether with its excgetical parallel, Matthew vi. 26) has never been 

 brought into court to settle the controversy; but to the best of my 

 knowledge it never has been. 



