evil:  who determines that he will give his life to battling with that evil to the last:  who determines that either that evil shall extinguish him, or he shall extinguish it.  I reverence the strong, sanguine mind, that resolves to work a revolution to better things, and that is not afraid to hope it can work a revolution.  And perhaps, my reader, we should both reverence it all the more that we find in ourselves very little like it.  It is a curious thing, and a sad thing, to remark in how many people there is too much resignation.  It kills out energy.  It is a weak, fretful, unhappy thing.  People are reconciled, in a sad sort of way, to the fashion in which things go on.  You have seen a poor, slatternly mother, in a way-side cottage, who has observed her little children playing in the road before it, in the way of passing carriages, angrily ordering the little things to come away from their dangerous and dirty play; yet, when the children disobey her, and remain where they were, just saying no more, making no farther effort.  You have known a master tell his man-servant to do something about stable or garden, yet, when the servant does not do it, taking no notice:  seeing that he has been disobeyed, yet wearily resigned, feeling that there is no use in always fighting.  And I do not speak of the not unfrequent cases in which the master, after giving his orders, comes to discover that it is best they should not be carried out, and is very glad to see them disregarded:  I mean when he is dissatisfied that what he has directed is not done, and wishes that it were done, and feels worried by the whole affair, yet is so devoid of energy as to rest in a fretful resignation.  Sometimes there is a sort of sense as if one had discharged his conscience by making a weak effort in the direction of doing a thing, an effort which had not the slightest chance of being successful.  When I was a little boy, many years since, I used to think this; and I was led to thinking it by remarking a singular characteristic in the conduct of a school-companion.  In those days, if you were chasing some other boy who had injured or offended you, with the design of retaliation, if you found you could not catch him, by reason of his superior speed, you would have recourse to the following expedient.  If your companion was within a little space of you, though a space you felt you could not make less, you would suddenly stick out one of your feet, which would hook round his, and he, stumbling over it, would fall.  I trust I am not suggesting a mischievous and dangerous trick to any boy of the present generation.  Indeed, I have the firmest belief that existing boys know all we used to know, and possibly more.  All this is by way of rendering intelligible what I have to say of my old companion.  He was not a good runner.  And when another boy gave him a sudden flick with a knotted handkerchief, or the like, he had little chance of catching that other boy.  Yet I have often seen him, when chasing