THE STREAM OF LIFE. 231 



fore it, and there is no period of maturity much less of 

 feeble age to which it looks forward. 



Standing in front of the house in which the old lady 

 had given us our simple meal, I could look up the valley 

 ten miles to the very head, where I knew a spring of 

 clear cold water poured out under a lofty rock. For 

 fifty years she had looked up the valley daily, and as the 

 years passed she must have thought often that the view 

 was very like her own view back through the way she 

 had traveled. The spring spreads first into a silver lake, 

 whose beauty is beyond words to describe. So her child- 

 hood passed into sunlit youth, where we all of us linger 

 longest in the journey of life. " Hie breve vivitur," said 

 Bernard, and then added, " hie breve plangitur, hie breve 

 fletur." Life is short, but so too are its sorrow and 

 mourning, and for most of us youth is long joy, full of de- 

 lights. But the stream leaves the lake and plunges into 

 the forest, struggling along through masses of tangled 

 brush, and over the trunks of fallen trees and in dark 

 ravines, receiving strength as it progresses, and overcom- 

 ing with steadfast purpose all opposing obstacles. Then 

 it sweeps along for miles in a glorious current, here lit by 

 sunshine, there shaded by masses of rich verdure, until it 

 enters a mountain gorge and goes down successive cat- 

 aracts. Can that wild white water, foaming in rage, 

 writhing in agony, beaten, baffled, moaning and lifting up 

 its floods to God in despair, can that stream of life ever 

 again be placid ? Lo, here in front of the cottage it 

 lapses softly over a mossy bed, and will flow on and on 

 into the great sea on whose deeps the wildest storms have 

 no effect, save only to make on its surface waves which 

 to its vast soundings are less by far than were the ripples 

 on the lake of vouth. 



