THE SPELL OF THE PAST 237 



joys and sorrows, the same friends, the same experi- 

 ences, see the world clad in the same hues, feel the 

 same ties of home, of father and mother, of school 

 and comrades, when all the world is so changed, — 

 when these things and persons that were so much to 

 us are forever past ? What is there left ? How 

 can life bring to them what it brought to us ? But 

 it will. The same story is told, over and over to 

 each succeeding generation, and each finds it new 

 and true for them alone. As we find our past in 

 others, so our youths will find their past in us, and 

 find it unique and peculiar. 



The lives of men are like the sparks that shoot up- 

 ward ; the same in the first ages as in the last, each 

 blazing its brief moment as it leaps forth, some at- 

 taining a greater brilliancy or a higher flight than 

 others, but all ending at last in the same black ob- 

 scurity. Or they are like the waves that break upon 

 the shore ; one generation following swift upon the 

 course of another, repeating the same evolutions, 

 and crumbling and vanishing in the same way. 



Probably no man ever lost his father or his 

 mother or his bosom friend without feeling that no 

 one else could ever have had just such an experi- 

 ence. Carlyle, in writing to Emerson shortly after 

 each had lost his mother, said, " Tou too have lost 

 your good old mother, who stayed with you like 

 mine, clear to the last ; alas, alas, it is the oldest 

 Law of Nature ; and it comes on every one of us 

 with a strange originality, as if it had never hap- 

 pened before ! " 



