ETCETERA. 213 



" intoxicating bowl " that she could not be trusted in sight 

 of the temptation. 



I will not moralize on all these things, for this reason, 

 that a moral is both more palatable and more wholesome 

 when you extract it for yourself. Served up cold by 

 another, it is apt to bring on nausea. Materials are plen- 

 teous for those who will use them. Like a thousand frag- 

 ments of a shattered mirror, the 

 bright flies and other ephemeral 

 fowls of the air, the caterpillars, 

 worms, and creeping things on the 

 earth, and the strange shapes which 



^ 



people every piece of water, are A Vicmm^rd 

 reflecting this same life of ours, 



with all its lights and shades. Its joys and sorrows light 

 upon them, its hopes and cares distract their hearts. 



One evening I dined with a Major who has a quiver full 

 of anxieties at home, and he showed me the long row of 

 their photographs in his pocket album ; another evening I 

 met a small beetle, travailously rolling along a round ball 

 of nutritious earthy matter, in which she proposed to bring 

 up her family. The simplest way of managing the matter 

 which suggested itself to her original mind was to stand 



