Uncle Jones misses, I think, this fundamental fact. He is always trying to destroy the boy's sense of immortality in this world by trying to persuade him to read the Bible and prepare for immortality in the next. "When a boy first begins his A B C," says Uncle Jones, "it is terrible work for him for a short time; yet how soon he gets over it, and begins to read! And, then, what a pleasure to be able to read a good and pleasant book! Oh, it is worthwhile to go through the trouble of learning to read fifty times over, to obtain the advantage of reading the Bible."
_Now it is a quainte Oddity of thys State and Mysterie of Loue that youre trew Louer combines the opposyte qualities of a deepe Humilitie and a loftie Conceit of Hymselfe. For with respect to this, hys Mistresse, he believes himself a most inferior Person, and as it were a mere Worme; yet if he doth suspect her to regard any Man els as his Equal, he is consumed with great Astonishment and raging Indignation, for this same Loue is a great Destroyer of Common Sense in its Victimes. For he thinketh Hymselfe inferior to her because he is her Louer, and superior to all Men els for the same silly Reason._--ANATOMIE OF LOUE.
To any sensitive man, not yet armored by the indifference that comes of being married himself, there is cause for apprehension in the prospect of meeting for the first time that person, male or female, whom somebody he knows and loves has recently agreed to marry. The event, when it comes, is unavoidable, nor is there any period in adult life when it may not happen, or anybody we know so old that he or she may not occasion it. Fact is more romantic, or at any rate remains romantic much later in life, than fiction. Only the other day I read in the newspaper of a man of one hundred and thirty-five years who had just subjected his little circle to this formality. Very likely the newspaper exaggerated, but the case undermines the security that one ordinarily feels in his relationship with the ageing.
Now it needs no argument that to be happy in the happiness of others is an inexpensive pleasure and well worth cultivating. Other things being equal, one should go dancing and singing to his first meeting with another's beloved. Bright-colored flowers, be she sixteen or sixty, should blossom, to his imagination, from the granite curb along his way; and, though a foolish convention may repress the song and dance, yet should he walk as if shod with the most levitating heels ever made from the liveliest of live rubber, and sing merrily in his heart.