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XXIV.

DISAPPOINTMENTS.

PLEASURE AFTER PAIN—­PAIN AFTER PLEASURE.

Our illusions commence in the cradle, and end only in the grave.  We have all great expectations.  Our ducks are ever to be geese, our geese swans; and we can not bear the truth when it comes upon us.  Hence our disappointments; hence Solomon cried out that all was vanity, that he had tried every thing, each pleasure, each beauty, and found it very empty.  People, he writes, should be taught by my example; they can not go beyond me—­“What can he do that comes after the king?”

It is very doubtful whether, to an untried or a young man, the warnings of Solomon, or the outpourings of that griefful prophet whose name now passes for a lamentation, have done much good.  Hope balances caution, and “springs eternal in the human breast.”  The old man fails, but the young constantly fancies he shall succeed.  “Solomon,” he cries, “did not know every thing;” but in a few years his own disappointments tell him how true the king’s words are, and he cherishes the experience he has bought.  But experience does not serve him in every case; it has been said that it is simply like the stern-lights of a ship, which lighten the path she has passed over, but not that which she is about to traverse.  To know one’s self is the hardest lesson we can learn.  Few of us ever realize our true position; few see that they are like Bunyan’s hero in the midst of Vanity Fair, and that all about them are snares, illusions, painted shows, real troubles, and true miseries, many trials and few enjoyments.

Perhaps the bitterest feelings in our life are those which we experience, when boys and girls, at the failures of our friendships and our loves.  We have heard of false friends; we have read of deceit in books; but we know nothing about it, and we hardly believe what we hear.  Our friend is to be true as steel.  He is always to like us, and we him.  He is a second Damon, we a Pythias.  We remember the fond old stories of celebrated friendships; how one shared his fortune, another gave his life.  Our friend is just of that sort; he is noble, true, grand, heroic.  Of course, he is wonderfully generous.  We talk of him; he will praise us.  The whole people around, who laugh at the sudden warmth, we regard as old fogies, who do not understand life half as well as we do.  But by and by our friend vanishes; the image which we thought was gold we find made of mere clay.  We grow melancholy; we are fond of reading Byron’s poetry; the sun is not nearly so bright nor the sky so blue as it used to be.  We sing, with the noble poet—­

    “My days are in the yellow leaf,
    The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
    The worm, the canker, and the grief
    Are mine alone.!”

We cease to believe in friendship; we quote old saws, and fancy ourselves cruelly used.  We think ourselves philosophic martyrs, when the simple truth is, that we are disappointed.