No wonder then that so many of
us pause in the midst of our gay confusion, and ask ourselves wearily:
"What is the use?"
What is the use of all these vain efforts of ours to feed our inner
appetites with a diet that can never nourish or sustain? What is the
use of all these monotonous beginnings that never have any tangible
end? What is the use of playing so burdensome a part upon the social
stage? What is the use of deceiving ourselves and our fellow-men, when
there is such a glorious cause of truth to fight for? Ah! it is the
way of the world, and that is a power which we fear to defy. The way
of the world! These little words have justified sin and crime over and
over again. They have masked the vilest cunning with a surface of
unquestionable propriety; they have quietly sanctioned one fashionable
folly after another, until vice and virtue are brought to one level,
ay, and if needs be, the former triumphs, and the latter is shoved
aside to make headway for its counterfeit. It is the way of the world
that poverty be sneered at and denounced, that humility be ridiculed,
that modesty be mocked, not openly not daringly, but by covert and
cutting insinuation, the ever are weapon of the moral coward. It is
the way of the world that sorrow be held pent up in hearts that are
dying for care and sympathy, the way of the world that selfish motives
be the best, that might is right, and indeed who can say our dazzling,
splendid, cruel world has not its way? And we, its victims, its
votaries, what recompense have we?
Such reflections as these trooped in solemn order before my mental
vision as I sat staring into the coals, that frosty morning after the
Merivales' entertainment.
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