We can do no good by nourishing fears, by encouraging silly conventionalities, by shirking the bald facts of life; and we should gently, joyfully, trustfully look our fate in the face and fear nothing.  Life will never be the joyous pilgrimage that it ought to be until men have learned to crush their pride, their doubts, their terrors, and have also learned to regard the beautiful sleep as a holy and fitting reward only to be rightly enjoyed by those who live purely, righteously, hopefully in the sight of God and man.

XXV.

JOURNALISM.

When the mystic midnight passes, the bustle of Fleet Street slackens; but on each side of the thoroughfare hundreds of workers with hand and brain are toiling with eager intensity.  In tall buildings here and there the lights glitter on every floor, and throw their long shafts through the gloom; not much activity is plainly visible, and yet somehow the merest novice feels that there is a throb in the air, and that some mysterious forces are working around him.  Hurrying messengers dash by, stray cabs rush along with a low rumble and sharp clash of hoofs.  But it is not in the street that the minds and bodies of men are obviously in action; go inside one of the mighty palatial offices, and you find yourself in the midst of such a hive of marvellous industry as the world has never seen before.  On one journal as many as four hundred and fifty or five hundred men are all labouring for dear life; every one is at high pressure, from the silent leader-writer to the fussy swift-footed messenger.  In that one building is concentrated a great estate, which yields a revenue that exceeds that of some principalities; it is a large nerve-centre, and myriads of fibres connect it with every part of the globe; or, say, it is like some miraculous eye, which sees in all directions and is indifferent to distance.  Go into one quiet, soft-carpeted room, and certain small glittering machines flash in the bright light.  “Click, click—­click, click!”—­long strips of tape are softly unwound and fall in slack twisted piles.  One of those machines is printing off a long letter from Berlin, another is registering news from Vienna, and by a third news from Paris comes as easily and rapidly as from Shoreditch; subdued men take the tapes, expand and make fluent the curt, halting phrases of the foreign correspondents, and pass the messages swiftly away to the printers.  From America, Australia, India, China, the items of news pour in, and are scrutinised by severe sub-editors; and those experts calculate to a fraction of an inch what space can be judiciously spared for each item.  If Parliament is sitting, the relays of messengers arrive with batches of manuscript; and, when an important debate is proceeding, the steady influx of hundreds of scribbled sheets is enormous.  A four hours’ speech from such an orator as Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Chamberlain contains, say, thirty