memories, and pass the sponge over cherished recollections.  The energy and the ingenuity of man are an over-match even for time.  From the ruins of the past, from the desolations of decay, new structures will rise, and a new harvest, more abundant than the old, will spring up from the stubble over which Time’s sickle has passed.  Recuperation is a law stronger than decay, and it is written all over the face of the earth.”

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE ACCIDENTS OF LIFE—­“SOME MEN ACHIEVE GREATNESS, AND SOME HAVE GREATNESS THRUST UPON THEM”—­A SLIDE—­RATTLESNAKES AT THE TOP AND AN ICY POOL AT THE BOTTOM—­A FANCIFUL THEORY.

While we sat thus conversing, our boatmen went down along the beach, and around a little point that ran out into the lake, to bathe.  They were jolly, but uncultivated men, given to rudeness and profanity of speech when out of our immediate presence, and by themselves, and we heard from them, while they were splashing and struggling in the water, expressions somewhat inelegant as well as profane.

“I have often thought,” said Spalding, as we listened to the rude and sometimes profane speech of our men, “how vast the influence which circumstances or accident, over which men have no control, have upon their conduct and destiny in this world, if not in the next.  The poet has well said,

     ’Full many a gem of purest ray serene
       The dark unfathomed caves of Ocean bear;
     And many a flower is born to blush unseen,
       And waste its sweetness on the desert air.’

“These rude men are but testifying to the great truth, that man is the creature, in a greater or less degree, of circumstances; that he is great or small, polished or rude, wise or simple, according to the accident of his birth, or the surroundings in the midst of which his journey of life lays.  True, there are intellects that will work themselves into position, men who will hew their way upward in spite of the difficulties which beset them, as there are others who will plunge down to degradation and dishonor, in defiance of tender rearing, of education, of association, and all the allurements to an upward career that can be presented to the human understanding.  But these are so rare, that they may be properly regarded as exceptions to the general rule; so rare, indeed, as to prove its truth.  You and I can look around us, and from among our acquaintances select many men and women, whose genius and solid understanding, and whose virtues too, have remained undeveloped, and probably will do so till they die, from lack of opportunity for their exercise.  Accident seems to have stricken them from their legitimate sphere.  Circumstances, for which they were not responsible, and over which they could exercise no control, have barred them out from their seeming true position in the world, and the genius which was intended for the daylight and