WHAT I LIVED FOR. 
105 
a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is be¬ 
fore a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your 
account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the out¬ 
skirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before 
Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is in¬ 
deed something true and sublime. But all these times 
and places and occasions are now and here. God him¬ 
self culminates in the present moment, and will never 
be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we 
are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and 
noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of 
the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly 
and obediently answers to our conceptions ; whether we 
travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us speijd 
our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist 
never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of 
his posterity at least could accomplish it. 
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and 
not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mos¬ 
quito’s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early 
and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation ; 
let company come and let company go, let the bells 
ring and the children cry, — determined to make a day 
of it. Why should we knock under and go with the 
stream ? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that 
terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in 
the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you 
are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With 
unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, look¬ 
ing another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the 
engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its 
pains. If the bell rings, why should we run ? We 
will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us 
