After all, some great sorrow is surely essential to the humanizing of every soul. Never till then can it offer anything but lip sympathy to those who have gasped through the sea of trouble. How can he who has known only days of comparative prosperity interpret the despairing sigh of the friendless? How can he who has never dropped tears into the open grave of _his own dead_ measure the agony of that last, lingering look, as they are hidden forever from human sight? Till a vacant chair stands by his own hearth, how can he ever understand why one should still keep on grieving for that which can never be recalled? Till his heart turns sickening away from some festive anniversary in which a missing voice once made music, how can he see why one need be doleful on such a day as that? Till he has closed his ears to some familiar strain which evoked associations too painful to bear, how can he tell "Why you cannot forget all that, since it makes you so miserable"? To answer such, is to talk to the blind of colors, to the deaf of sounds, to the dead of life and motion. Never, till his own house is darkened, till the badge of desolation flutters from his own door, till sunshiny days return merciless in their brightness, and stormy ones send his thoughts shuddering to a shelterless grave; never till he has tried changing the place, but still _always_ only to keep the old pain, can he understand the desperation with which at last one sits helplessly down, to face that which it can neither look upon nor flee from.
The philosopher is fond of talking to me about what he calls "the dignity of human nature." The pains he takes to bolster himself up in this shaky belief of his, would do credit to a better cause. Obstinacy of course is at the bottom of it, for he no more believes in it than I do. How can he, and he living and breathing in this sublunary sphere _himself_? That's just what I said to him this morning; for, thank Providence, I can generally speak my mind on most points. What did he say? That's my affair; suffice it to say, he sticks to it. I made him sit down; then I sat down on his knee, to make sure of a listener. Then I took in my hand the morning papers. In the first place, there was a man of sixty who had been coaxed in where he shouldn't go, and robbed while there. Secondly, there was a justice of the peace sentenced to the Penitentiary for robbery. Thirdly, there was a clergyman convicted of bigamy. Fourthly, there was a husband, who had been trying, with an iron shovel, to find out whether his wife had any brains. Fifthly, there was another who had decided an argument by biting off a portion of his antagonist's nose. Sixthly, there were two lads, of the respective ages of eight and thirteen, who had been murderously perforating each other's intestines with sharp penknives. Seventhly, there was a man in Massachusetts who had lately numbered his twenty-fifth child. Eighthly, there was a "gentleman" found, in the small hours, sitting on the cold sidewalk in ---- street, hiccupping for a waiter "to bring him another bottle of champagne."