52 ARDENMOHR. 



"Yes, of their own circumstances, and quite 

 unlikely to act on others' views." 



"Yet counsel and sympathy are sought by many 

 people far from being fools." 



"Ay, sought, and from those they like or trust; 

 but not to be volunteered. A better authority than 

 maxim-mongers says, 'The heart knoweth its own 

 bitterness, and a stranger intermeddleth not with its 

 joys.'" 



"A stranger, of course; but he does not say a 

 friend." 



" Surely not a friend's counsel Bacon pronounces 

 doubly good ; it halves evil and doubles joys. By a 

 stranger I understand one who has not one's con- 

 fidence. Yet the meaning may lie deeper, and point 

 to those silent griefs and joys which even friendship 

 cannot touch." 



"You seem, Hope, to have thought this matter 

 over before." 



"Not very philosophically, Major; but there are 

 some lines, not poetry, in my scrap-book, suggested 

 to me by Captain Maury's statements about the 

 perfect stillness of the sea in great depths, and which 

 bear in some degree on the subject. I need scarcely 

 say that they are poetry of a very mild type." 



