All his prayers begin with "Now
I lay me down to sleep," and he is forever looking forward to the
time when he shall go to his "long rest." He has consented to
perform certain old-established charities, too, after a fashion,
but he does not wish to hear of any new-fangled ones; he doesn't
wish to have any supplementary articles added to the contract, to
fit it to the present time. He shows the whites of his eyes on the
Sabbath, and the blacks all the rest of the week. The evil is not
merely a stagnation of blood, but a stagnation of spirit. Many,
no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by
habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher
motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane,
for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they
are themselves.
We dream of foreign countries, of other times and races of men, placing
them at a distance in history or space; but let some significant
event like the present occur in our midst, and we discover, often,
this distance and this strangeness between us and our nearest
neighbors. They are our Austrias, and Chinas, and South Sea Islands.
Our crowded society becomes well spaced all at once, clean and
handsome to the eye,--a city of magnificent distances.
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