Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/232

 *porters, even of friends—the strangely averted eye on the street, the suddenly abandoned weekly call, the cessation of little notes of encouragement, the amazing revelations of malignity and bitterness at election times, and the flood increasing in volume at each succeeding election. One man, thought to be devoted to a cause, fails in his desire to secure an office; another you refuse a contract; he whom you neglected to favor in January punctually appears in the opposition ranks in November, one by one they drop away, and multiply into an army. Even in the official group in the City Hall and in the council, there are jealousies, and childish spites, and pitiable little ambitions and with them misunderstanding, gossip, slander, anonymous attacks, lies, abuse, hatred, until youth makes the awful discovery that there is, after all, in human nature, pure malice, and youth must fight hard to retain its ideals, so continually are all the old lovely illusions stripped away in this bewildering complication of little tragedies and comedies we call life.

To be sure, youth might have known, having read the like in books from infancy, and having made some reflections of its own on the irony of things, and indulged from time to time in philosophizings. But that was about the experience of others, from which none of us is wise enough to learn. Most of us indeed are not wise enough to learn from our own. It is all a part of life. What a thing human life is, to be sure, and human nature! Ay di mi! as Carlyle used to say. Patience, and shuffle the cards!