There are many of you perhaps to-day who will demand that I should
take my fourth instance, and will ask that that at least may do its
duty. Will it? There is the region of the affections--that region
wherein we stray in early spring days as pickers of the spring-flowers
of our opening life, where suns are always glorious and sunsets only
speak of brighter dawn, where poetry is in all ordinary conversation
and hope springs to higher heights from hour to hour, where Mays
are always Mays and Junes are always Junes, where flowers are ever
bursting, and there seems no end to our nosegays, no limit to our
imaginations, no fetter to our fancies, no restraint to our desires.
There is the world, the vast, powerful world, of the passions,
purified by exhaustive cultivation into what we call the affections
of a higher life. By them we deal with our fellow-creatures; by them,
when we are young, we form great friendships; by them, as we grow
older, we form around us certain associations that we intend to
support us as life goes off. We have all known it. There is the
friend, there is the sweetheart, there is the wife, there is the
child, there are the dear expressions of the strong heart that after
all beats in Englishmen.
Pages:
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248