Restless as the sea, we are never satisfied this side the stars; but we are all looking forward to that sweet by and by, “as the hart panteth for the water brook.”

  I shall be satisfied, not here, not here
    Not where the sparkling waters fade into mocking
      sands as we draw near,
  Where in the wilderness each footstep falters,
    I shall be satisfied; but, oh, not here.

  Not here, where every dream of bliss deceives us,
    Where the worn spirit never finds its goal,
  But haunted ever by thoughts that grieve us,
    Across our souls floods of bitter memories roll.

  Satisfied, satisfied, the soul’s vague longing,
    The aching void, which nothing earthly fills,
  Oh, what desires upon my mind are thronging,
    As my eyes turn upward to the heavenly hills!

  Shall they be satisfied, the spirit’s yearning,
    For sweet communion with kindred minds? 
  The silent love that here meets no returning,
    The inspiration, which no language finds?

  There is a land, where every pulse is thrilling,
    With rapture, earth’s sojourners may not know,
  Where heaven’s repose the weary heart is stilling,
    And peacefully earth’s storm-tossed currents flow.

  Far out of sight, while yet the flesh enfolds us,
    Lies that fair country, where our hearts abide,
  And, of its bliss, naught more wondrous is told us,
    Than these few words, I shall be satisfied.

CHAPTER XII.

FROM PHILISTINE TO BENEDICT AND A HONEYMOON.

The fates, who lead the willing-and drive the unwilling, guided me to the old time firm of B. & T. publishers.  They were overwhelmed with applications from the great army of the impecunious, and did not wish to pay any more salaries; but “mercy tempers the blast to the shorn lamb,” and they persuaded me, by a tender of large profits on their Worcester’s Dictionaries, to strike out on my own hook and endeavor to induce a reluctant public to buy these instead of the popular dictionaries written by “Noah Webster who came over in the ark.”

The special prices granted by the publishers enabled me to undersell the wholesalers, and by securing their adoption as regular text-books by school boards, I made more money than ever before in my life, sometimes from $25 to $100 per day, consequently the firm finding I was filling the markets and my own pockets so that they had no sales at regular prices, hired me at a liberal salary as representative of all their publications.

In this business I won my “double stars,” although the competition was intense.  I often found as many as twenty agents at the same time and in the same town, log-rolling with school committees for the adoption of their books, the merits of the publications “cut but little ice.”  Nearly every school official “had his price,” wanting to know what there was in his vote for him, and the agent who best concealed the bribery hook by dining and wining teachers and committeemen, filling their libraries with complimentary books and their pockets with secret commissions, “caught the most fish.”