We human beings can stand a great deal.  There is great margin allowed by our constitution, physical and moral.  I suppose there is no doubt that a man may daily for years eat what is unwholesome, breathe air which is bad, or go through a round of life which is not the best or the right one for either body or mind, and yet be little the worse.  And so men pass through great trials and through long years, and yet are not altered so very much.  The other day, walking along the street, I saw a man whom I had not seen for ten years.  I knew that since I saw him last he had gone through very heavy troubles, and that these had sat very heavily upon him.  I remembered how he had lost that friend who was the dearest to him of all human beings, and I knew how broken down he had been for many months after that great sorrow came.  Yet there he was, walking along, an unnoticed unit, just like any one else; and he was looking wonderfully well.  No doubt he seemed pale, worn, and anxious:  but he was very well and carefully dressed; he was walking with a brisk, active step; and I dare say is feeling pretty well reconciled to being what he is, and to the circumstances amid which he is living.  Still, one felt that somehow a tremendous change had passed over him.  I felt sorry for him, and all the more that he did not seem to feel sorry for himself.  It made me sad to think that some day I should be like him; that perhaps in the eyes of my juniors I look like him already, careworn and aging.  I dare say in his feeling there was no such sense of falling off.  Perhaps he was tolerably content.  He was walking so fast, and looking so sharp, that I am sure he had no desponding feeling at the time.  Despondency goes with slow movements and with vague looks.  The sense of having materially fallen off is destructive to the eagle-eye.  Yes, he was tolerably content.  We can go down-hill cheerfully, save at the points where it is sharply brought home to us that we are going down-hill.  Lately I sat at dinner opposite an old lady who had the remains of striking beauty.  I remember how much she interested me.  Her hair was false, her teeth were false, her complexion was shrivelled, her form had lost the round symmetry of earlier years, and was angular and stiff; yet how cheerful and lively she was!  She had gone far down-hill physically; but either she did not feel her decadence, or she had grown quite reconciled to it.  Her daughter, a blooming matron, was there, happy, wealthy, good; yet not apparently a whit more reconciled to life than the aged grandam.  It was pleasing, and yet it was sad, to see how well we can make up our mind to what is inevitable.  And such a sight brings up to one a glimpse of Future Years.  The cloud seems to part before one, and through the rift you discern your earthly track far away, and a jaded pilgrim plodding along it with weary step; and though the pilgrim does not look like you, yet you know the pilgrim is yourself.