interposing this buffer?  Did you ever think you might perhaps prevent a trouble from coming by constantly anticipating it,—­keeping, meanwhile, an under-thought that things rarely happen as you anticipate them, and thus that your anticipation of the thing might possibly keep it away?  Of course you have; for you are a human being.  And in all common cases, a watch might as well think to keep a skilful watchmaker in ignorance of the way in which its movements are produced, as a human being think to prevent another human being from knowing exactly how he will think and feel in given circumstances.  We have watched the working of our own watches far too closely and long, my friends, to have the least difficulty in understanding the great principles upon which the watches of other men go.  I cannot look inside your breast, my reader, and see the machinery that is working there:  I mean the machinery of thought and feeling.  But I know exactly how it works, nevertheless; for I have long watched a machinery precisely like it.

There are a great many people in this world who feel that things are all wrong, that they have missed stays in life, that they are beaten,—­and yet who don’t much mind.  They are indurated by long use.  They do not try to disguise from themselves the facts.  There are some men who diligently try to disguise the facts, and who in some measure succeed in doing so.  I have known a self-sufficient and disagreeable clergyman who had a church in a large city.  Five-sixths of the seats in the church were quite empty; yet the clergyman often talked of what a good congregation he had, with a confidence which would have deceived any one who had not seen it.  I have known a church where it was agony to any one with an ear to listen to the noise produced when the people were singing; yet the clergyman often talked of what splendid music he had.  I have known an entirely briefless barrister, whose friends gave out that the sole reason why he had no briefs was that he did not want any.  I have known students who did not get the prizes for which they competed, but who declared that the reason of their failure was, that, though they competed for the prizes, they did not wish to get them.  I have known a fast young woman, after many engagements made and broken, marry as the last resort a brainless and penniless blackguard; yet all her family talk in big terms of what a delightful connection she was making.  Now, where all that self-deception is genuine, let us be glad to see it; and let us not, like Mr. Snarling, take a spiteful pleasure in undeceiving those who are so happy to be deceived.  In most cases, indeed, such trickery deceives nobody.  But where it truly deceives those who practise it, even if it deceive nobody else, you see there is no true Resignation.  A man who has made a mess of life has no need to be resigned, if he fancies he has succeeded splendidly.  But I look with great interest, and often with deep respect, at the man or woman who feels that life has been a