Whence this marked difference? To account for it, we must needs trace
back to the first haunts of childhood the steps of these two fugitives,
each of whom has passed thence, the one into a desert _mirage_, teeming
with processions of the gloomiest falsities in life, and the other--also
into the desert, but where he is yet refreshed and solaced by an
unshaken faith in the genial verities of life, though separated from
them by irrecoverable miles of trackless wastes, and where, however
apparently abandoned and desolate, he is yet ministered unto by angels,
and no mimic fantasies are suffered to exercise upon his heart their
overmastering seductions to
"Allure, or terrify, or undermine."
Whether the days of childhood be our happiest days, is a question all by
itself. But there can be no question as to the inevitable certainty with
which the conditions of childhood, fortunate or unfortunate, determine
the main temper and disposition of our lives. For it is underneath the
multitude of fleeting proposals and conscious efforts, born of reason,
and which, to one looking upon life from any superficial stand-point,
seem to have all to do with its conduct, that there runs the
undercurrent of disposition, which is born of Nature, which is cradled
and nurtured with us in our infancy, which is itself a general choice,
branching out into our specific choices of certain directions and aims
among all opposite directions and aims, and which, although we rarely
recognize its important functions, is in all cases the arbiter of our
destiny.
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