Where No Fear Was

and grasp the significance of the strange adventure of life, a time, I say, when we may look back a little, not sentimentally or with any hope of making out

ause one of the strangest things about life seems to be our incapacity to decide beforehand, or even at the time, where the real and fruitful joys, and where the dark dangers and distresses lie. The things that at certain times filled all one's mind, kindled hope and aim, seemed so infinitely

he is looking at the pattern of the carpet, and wondering for the hundredth time whether the oddly-shaped blue thing which appears and reappears at intervals is a bird or a flower-yes, it is certainly meant for a bird perched on a bough! He wishes the talk were over, he looks at the little scar on

e, by any description. We must go there ourselves; and not till we feel the teeth of the trap biting

he boy is wandering in the enchanted forest, and he is told to avoid the house where the Daughter of the Ogre lives. Hi

n her his love in error. This has taken some of the old joy out of his heart

looking into a long dark passage, which leads out, far away from where he stands, into the starlit night. Then a figure, which seems to have been running from a long distance, turns the corner, and comes speeding down towards him. He has not time to close the door, but stands aside to let it pass; it passes, and slips behind him; and soon he sees that it is a shadow of himself, which has fallen on t

perhaps-to a deluding temptation. They are delivered for a time; and then a little while after they find their shadow, which no tears or an

us encounter, it does not mean that we shall be for ever vanquished, though it means perhaps a long and dreary waste of shame-stained days. That is what we must try to avoi

e us that the dangers and disasters ahead are not so dreadful as they appear to be, and that the mistakes we have made are not irreparable. But no one can re

erience; and though we cannot rejoice when we are in the grip of it, and when we cannot see what the end will be, we can at least say to ourselves again and again, "this is at all events reality-this is business!" for it is the moments of endurance and energy and action which after all justify us