Youth is the time to go flashing from one end of the world to the other to try the manners of different nations; to hear the chimes at midnight; to see the sunrise in town and country; to be converted at a revival; to circumnavigate the metaphysics, write halting verses, run a mile to see a fire, and wait all day long in the theatre to applaud Hernani.
There is no progress whatever. Everything is just the same as it was thousands, and tens of thousands, of years ago. The outward form changes. The essence does not change.
The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.
There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water than his head could carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked old wild sea-songs, minding nobody... Often I have heard the house shaking with Yo-ho-ho and a bottle and rum, all the neighbours joining in for dear life with the fear of death upon them and each singing louder than the other to avoid remark. Fiften men on the dead man's chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil have done for the rest. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
You mightn't happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well, many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese-toasted, mostly-and woke up again, and here I were.
There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits of formal and laborious science; but it is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life.
A man met a lad weeping. "What do you weep for?" he asked. "I am weeping for my sins," said the lad. "You must have little to do," said the man. The next day, they met again. Once more the lad was weeping. "Why do you weep now?" asked the man. "I am weeping because I have nothing to eat," said the lad. "I thought it would come to that," said the man.
Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!
The man is a success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who leaves the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.