How I envy those who become prudent without thwackings of experience!  Such men seem to be not uncommon.  I don’t mean cold-blooded calculators of profit and loss in life’s possibilities; nor yet the plodding dull, who never have imagination enough to quit the beaten track of security; but bright-witted and large-hearted fellows who seem always to be led by common sense, who go steadily from stage to stage of life, doing the right, the prudent things, guilty of no vagaries, winning respect by natural progress, seldom needing aid themselves, often helpful to others, and, through all, good-tempered, deliberate, happy.  How I envy them!

For of myself it might be said that whatever folly is possible to a moneyless man, that folly I have at one time or another committed.  Within my nature there seemed to be no faculty of rational self-guidance.  Boy and man, I blundered into every ditch and bog which lay within sight of my way.  Never did silly mortal reap such harvest of experience; never had any one so many bruises to show for it.  Thwack, thwack!  No sooner had I recovered from one sound drubbing than I put myself in the way of another.  “Unpractical” I was called by those who spoke mildly; “idiot”—­I am sure—­by many a ruder tongue.  And idiot I see myself, whenever I glance back over the long, devious road.  Something, obviously, I lacked from the beginning, some balancing principle granted to most men in one or another degree.  I had brains, but they were no help to me in the common circumstances of life.  But for the good fortune which plucked me out of my mazes and set me in paradise, I should no doubt have blundered on to the end.  The last thwack of experience would have laid me low just when I was becoming really a prudent man.

VII.

This morning’s sunshine faded amid slow-gathering clouds, but something of its light seems still to linger in the air, and to touch the rain which is falling softly.  I hear a pattering upon the still leafage of the garden; it is a sound which lulls, and tunes the mind to calm thoughtfulness.

I have a letter to-day from my old friend in Germany, E. B. For many and many a year these letters have made a pleasant incident in my life; more than that, they have often brought me help and comfort.  It must be a rare thing for friendly correspondence to go on during the greater part of a lifetime between men of different nationalities who see each other not twice in two decades.  We were young men when we first met in London, poor, struggling, full of hopes and ideals; now we look back upon those far memories from the autumn of life.  B. writes to-day in a vein of quiet contentment, which does me good.  He quotes Goethe:  “Was man in der Jugend begehrt hat man im Alter die Fulle.”