evening closes in, and then the horizon seems to be narrowing; like the walls of the deadly chamber in the home of the Inquisition, the skies shrink inward—­and the youth has misgivings.  The next day finds his plain shrunken a little in expanse, and his horizon has not so superb a sweep.  Nevertheless he goes gaily on, and once more he raises his voice joyously, and tries to think that the plain and the horizon can contract no more.  Thus in foolish hopefulness he passes his days until the glorious plain of his dreams has been traversed, and, lo, under his very feet is the great gulf fixed, and far below the tide—­the tide of Eternity—­laps sullenly against the walls of the deadly chasm.  If the youth knew that the gulf and the rolling river were so near—­if he not only knew, but could absolutely picture his doom—­would he be so merry?  Ah, no!

I repeat that, if men could be so disciplined as to believe in their souls that death must come, then there would be no lost days.  Is there one of us who can say that he never lost a day amid this too brief, too joyous, too entrancing term of existence?  Not one.  The aged Roman—­who, by-the-way, was somewhat of a prig—­used to go about moaning, “I have lost a day,” if he thought he had not performed some good action or learned something in the twenty-four hours.  Most of us have no such qualms; we waste the time freely; and we never know that it is wasted until with a dull shock we comprehend that all must be left and that the squandered hours can never be retrieved.  The men who are strongest and greatest and best suffer the acutest remorse for the lost days; they know their own powers, and that very knowledge makes them suffer all the more bitterly when they reckon up what they might have done and compare it with the sum of their actual achievement.

In a certain German town a little cell is shown on the walls of which a famous name is marked many times.  It appears that in his turbulent youth Prince Bismarck was often a prisoner in this cell; and his various appearances are registered under eleven different dates.  Moreover, I observe from the same rude register that he fought twenty-eight duels.  Lost days—­lost days!  He tells us how he drank in the usual insane fashion prevalent among the students.  He “cannot tell how much Burgundy he could really drink.”  Lost days—­lost days!  And now the great old man, with Europe at his feet and the world awaiting his lightest word with eagerness, turns regretfully sometimes to think of the days thrown away.  A haze seems to hang before the eyes of such as he; and it is a haze that makes the future seem dim and vast, even while it obscures all the sharp outlines of things.  The child is not capable of reasoning coherently, and therefore its disposition to fritter away time must be regarded as only the result of defective organization; but the young man and young woman can reason, and yet we find them perpetually making excuses for eluding