Happy are they with whom this domino is never completely dropped!  Happy, thrice happy, they who believe, and still maintain that belief, like champion knights, against all comers, in honor, chastity, friendship, goodness, virtue, gratitude.  It is a long odds that the men who do not believe in these virtues have none themselves; for we speak from our hearts, and we tell of others that which we think of ourselves.  The French, a mournful, sad, and unhappy nation—­even at the bottom of all their external gaiety—­have a sad word, a participle, desillusionne, disillusioned; and by it they mean one who has worn out all his youthful ideas, who has been behind the scenes, and has seen the bare walls of the theater, without the light and paint, and has watched the ugly actors and gaunt actresses by daylight.  The taste of life is very bitter in the mouth of such a man; his joys are Dead Sea apples—­dust and ashes in the mouths of those who bite them.  No flowers spring up about his path; he is very melancholy and suspicious, very hard and incredulous; he has faith neither in the honesty of man nor in the purity of woman.  He is desillusionne—­by far too wise to be taken in with painted toys.  Every one acts with self-interest!  His doctor, his friend, or his valet will be sorry for his death merely from the amount of money interest that they have in his life.  Bare and grim unto tears, even if he had any, is the life of such a man.  With him, sadder than Lethe or the Styx, the river of time runs between stony banks, and, often a calm suicide, it bears him to the Morgue.  Happier by far is he who, with whitened hair and wrinkled brow, sits crowned with the flowers of illusion; and who, with the ear of age, still remains a charmed listener to the songs which pleased his youth, trusting “his heart and what the world calls illusions.”

* * * * *

XL.

PHILLIPS BROOKS

AT HOME.

Phillips Brooks at home, of course, means Phillips Brooks in Trinity Church, Boston.  Other than his church, home proper he has none, for he abides a bachelor.

And somehow it seems almost fit that a man like Mr. Brooks, a man so ample, so overflowing; a man, as it were, more than sufficient to himself, sufficient also to a multitude of others, should have his home large and public; such a home, in fact, as Trinity Church.  Here Phillips Brooks shines like a sun—­diffusing warmth and light and life.  What a blessing to what a number!  To what a number of souls, it would have been natural to say; but, almost as natural, to what a number of bodies!  For the physical man is a source of comfort, in its kind, hardly less so than the intellectual and the spiritual.  How that massive, majestic manhood makes temperature where it is, and what temperature!  Broad, equable, temperate, calm; yet tonic, withal, and inspiring.