It is so by the inevitable law of our being.  It is because we are rational creatures that it is so.  We cannot help looking forward to that which is coming, and looking back on that which is past; nor can we suppress, as we do so, an emotion corresponding to the perception.  There is not the least use in telling a little boy who knows that he is to have a tooth pulled out to-morrow, that it is absurd in him to make himself unhappy to-night through the anticipation of it.  You may show with irrefragable force of reason, that the pain will last only for the two or three seconds during which the tooth is being wrenched from its place, and that it will be time enough to vex himself about the pain when he has actually to feel it.  But the little fellow will pass but an unhappy night in the dismal prospect; and by the time the cold iron lays hold of the tooth, he will have endured by anticipation a vast deal more suffering than the suffering of the actual operation.  It is so with bigger people, looking forward to greater trials.  And it serves no end whatever to prove that all this ought not to be.  The question as to the emotions turned off in the workings of the human mind is one of fact.  It is not how the machine ought to work, but how the machine does work.  And as with the anticipation of suffering, so with its retrospect.  The great grief which is past, even though its consequences no longer directly press upon us, casts its shadow over after-years.  There are, indeed, some hardships and trials upon which it is possible that we may look back with satisfaction.  The contrast with them enhances the enjoyment of better days.  But these trials, it seems to me, must be such as come through the direct intervention of Providence; and they must be clear of the elements of human cruelty or injustice.  I do not believe that a man who was a weakly and timid boy can ever look back with pleasure upon the ill-usage of the brutal bully of his school-days, or upon the injustice of his teacher in cheating him out of some well-earned prize.  There are kinds of great suffering which can never be thought of without present suffering, so long as human nature continues what it is.  And I believe that past sorrows are a great reality in our present life, and exert a great influence over our present life, whether for good or ill.  As you may see in the trembling knees of some poor horse, in its drooping head, and spiritless paces, that it was overwrought when young:  so, if the human soul were a thing that could be seen, you might discern the scars where the iron entered into it long ago,—­you might trace not merely the enduring remembrance, but the enduring results, of the incapacity and dishonesty of teachers, the heartlessness of companions, and the idiotic folly and cruelty of parents.  No, it will not do to tell us that past sufferings have ceased to exist, while their remembrance continues so vivid, and their results so great.  You are not done with the bitter frosts of last winter, though