The rest--life is enough for them; hunger and
thirst, love and strife, hope and fear, that is their daily meat.
And life, I doubt not, is what we are set to taste. Of all those
thousands, some few have the desire, and fewer still the power, to
stand apart from the throng. These are not content with the humdrum
life of earning a livelihood, of forming ties, of passing the time
as pleasantly as they can. They desire rather to be felt, to
exercise influence, to mould others to their will, to use them for
their convenience. I have had little temptation to do that, but my
life has been poisoned at its source, I now discern, by the desire
to differentiate myself from others. I could not walk faithfully in
the procession; I was as one who likes to sit securely in his
window above the street, noting all that he sees, sketching all
that strikes his fancy, hugging his pleasure at being apart from
and superior to the ordinary run of mortals. Here lay my chiefest
fault, that I could not bear a humble hand, but looked upon my
wealth, my loving circle, as things that should fence me from the
throng. I lived in a paradise of my own devising.
But now I have put that all aside for ever.
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