ECONOMY. 
13 
child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left 
undone ? ” 
We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests ; 
as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my 
beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. 
If I had remembered this it would have prevented some 
mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed 
them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful tri¬ 
angles ! What distant and different beings in the various 
mansions of the universe are contemplating the same 
one at the same moment! Nature and human life are 
as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say 
what prospect life offers to another ? Could a greater 
miracle take place than for us to look through each 
other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the 
ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of 
the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology! — I know of no 
reading of another’s experience so startling and inform¬ 
ing as this would be. 
The greater part of what my neighbors call good I 
believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of any 
thing, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What 
demon possessed me that I behaved so well ? You may 
say the wisest thing you can old man, —* you who have 
lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind, — I 
hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from 
all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of 
another like stranded vessels. 
I think that we may safely trust a good deal more 
than we do. We may waive just so much care of our¬ 
selves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as 
* well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The 
incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well nigh 
