Page:Aristopia (1895).pdf/11

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(There is no greater grief than memory of happy days in misery; or, as the hero of Tennyson's "Locksley Hall" paraphrases it, "a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.") Not so. It is a relief and a solace, a pleasure, although a mournful one, in the misery that is, to contemplate the happiness that was or might have been. Then, too, the looking back upon the parting of the ways which led us from happiness to misery may teach us to look forward to the parting of the ways which may lead from misery to happiness. Studying the opportunities which we have lost may teach us to grasp the opportunities which are to come.

Let us, then, take what pleasure we may in figuring a man of great wisdom, foresight, and genius, with an unselfish devotion to the welfare of humanity, placed with immense power at the parting of the ways in the course of human events, seizing the opportunity to turn the march of bewildered and struggling humanity into the path leading up and away from the dangerous marshes over which dance the deluding ignes fatui of ancient errors, and under which lie the black quagmires of antique evils. Thus to contemplate the past which might have