Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/291

Rh Then came a youth of incessant labour—labour whose exhaustion none can tell but those engaged in it. How often has the pen dropped from my hand for very weariness, and the characters swam before my aching sight! How often have I written when heartsick, forcing my imagination, till the re-action was terrible!" "Dearest Walter, do not talk, you are not equal to it," interrupted his companion. "Oh, no; it does me good. I cannot bear," returned he, "to be here thinking over thoughts that fret my very life away. Alas! how I grieve over all that was yet stored in my mind! Do you know, Lavinia" continued he, with all the eagerness of a slight delirium, "I am far cleverer than I was; I have felt, have thought so much! Talk of the mind exhausting itself!—never! Think of the mass of material which every day accumulates! Then experience, with its calm, clear light, corrects so many youthful fallacies; every day we feel our higher moral responsibility, and our greater power. What beautiful