It
entered no one's head that success, in its simplest analysis, means
thrusting some one else aside from a place which he desires to
fill. But why on such a day should one think of the feelings of
others? we were all bent on virtuously gratifying our own desires.
The boys who were left out were the weak and the timid, the ailing
and the erring, the awkward and the unpopular, the clumsy and the
stupid; they were not bidden to take courage, they were rather
bidden to envy the unattainable, and to submit with such grace as
they could muster. But we pushed all such vague and unsatisfactory
thoughts in the background; we sounded the clarion and filled the
fife, and were at case in Zion, while we worshipped the great,
brave, glittering world.
What I desired was that, in the height of our jubilant self-
gratulation, some sweet and gracious figure, full of heavenly
wisdom, could have twitched the gaudy curtain aside for a moment
and shown us other things than these; who could have assured us
that we all, however stupid and dreary and awkward and indolent,
however vexed with low dreams and ugly temptations, yet had our
share and place in the rich inheritance of life; and that even if
it was to be all a record of dull failure, commonplace sinfulness
cheered by no joyful triumph, no friendly smile--yet if we fought
the fault and did the dull task faithfully, and desired to be but a
little better, a little stronger, a little more unselfish, that the
pilgrimage with all its sandy tracts and terrifying spectres would
not be traversed in vain; and then I think we might have been
brought together with a sense of sweeter and truer unity, and might
have thought of life as a thing to be shared, and joy as a thing to
be lavished, and not have rather conceived of the world as a place
full of fine things, of which we were all to gather sedulously as
many as we could grasp and retain.
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