The men who are strongest and
greatest and best suffer the acutest remorse for the lost days; they
know their own powers, and that very knowledge makes them suffer all the
more bitterly when they reckon up what they might have done and compare
it with the sum of their actual achievement.
In a certain German town a little cell is shown on the walls of which a
famous name is marked many times. It appears that in his turbulent youth
Prince Bismarck was often a prisoner in this cell; and his various
appearances are registered under eleven different dates. Moreover, I
observe from the same rude register that he fought twenty-eight duels.
Lost days--lost days! He tells us how he drank in the usual insane
fashion prevalent among the students. He "cannot tell how much Burgundy
he could really drink." Lost days--lost days! And now the great old man,
with Europe at his feet and the world awaiting his lightest word with
eagerness, turns regretfully sometimes to think of the days thrown away.
A haze seems to hang before the eyes of such as he; and it is a haze
that makes the future seem dim and vast, even while it obscures all the
sharp outlines of things. The child is not capable of reasoning
coherently, and therefore its disposition to fritter away time must be
regarded as only the result of defective organization; but the young man
and young woman can reason, and yet we find them perpetually making
excuses for eluding time and eternity.
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