It Must Be Sad To Outlive Aught

It Is A Fact Perhaps Kept A Little Too Much In The Background, That Mothers Have A Self Larger Than Their Maternity, And That When Their Sons Have Become Taller Than Themselves, And Are Gone From Them To College Or Into The World, There Are Wide Spaces Of Their Time Which Are Not Filled With Praying For Their Boys, Reading Old Letters, And Envying Yet Blessing Those Who Are Attending To Their Shirt-buttons.

When What Is Good Comes Of Age, And Is Likely To Live, There Is Reason For Rejoicing.

Perhaps Nothing Ud Be A Lesson To Us If It Didn't Come Too Late. It's Well We Should Feel As Life's A Reckoning We Can't Make Twice Over; There's No Real Making Amends In This World, Any More Nor You Can Mend A Wrong Subtraction By Doing Your Addition Right.

But If Maggie Had Been That Young Lady, You Would Probably Have Known Nothing About Her: Her Life Would Have Had So Few Vicissitudes That It Could Hardly Have Been Written; For The Happiest Women, Like The Happiest Nations, Have No History.

Some Discouragement, Some Faintness Of Heart At The New Real Future Which Replaces The Imaginary, Is Not Unusual, And We Do Not Expect People To Be Deeply Moved By What Is Not Unusual. That Element Of Tragedy Which Lies In The Very Fact Of Frequency Has Not Yet Wrought Itself Into The Coarse Emotion Of Mankind, And Perhaps Our Frames Could Hardly Bear Much Of It. If We Had A Keen Vision And Feeling Of All Ordinary Human Life, It Would Be Like Hearing The Grass Grow And The Squirrel's Heart Beat, And We Should Die Of That Roar Which Lies On The Other Side Of Silence.