The things we do!

But at
four or five and twenty, in spite of some failures and
disappointments, the treasure of existence to an honest, frank
heart, still seems inexhaustible as it is inestimable. The
contrast between the future Graham looked forward to, full of
hopes and ambitions, and this past whose history he could
guess at, and whose results he contemplated, forced itself
upon him, and an immense compassion filled the young man's
heart at the sight of this wasted life, of this wayward mind,
lighted up with the sudden, passionate gleams of tenderness
for his child, the one pure affection perhaps that survived to
witness to what had been--a great compassion, an honest,
wondering pity for this man who had thus recklessly squandered
his share of the common birth right. Ah! which of us, standing
on safe shores, and seeing, as all must see at times, the sad
wreck of some shattered life cast up by the troubled waves at
our feet, does not ask himself, in no supercilious spirit,
surely, but with an awe-struck humility, "Who or what hath
made thee to differ?"
Perhaps, as M.


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