Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/204

Rh our joys have taken their departure, they are but a step before us. But it has always been so, the chief occupation of man being to torment himself withal. At first, on coming to Oregon, Ewing Young would be king; but finding there a monarch so much his superior, he fell into hateful ways. So mightily had he been mistaken in the beginning, that soon he felt it hardly safe to be sure of anything. But when the shore lines of his life were worn somewhat smooth by the eroding waves of humanity's ocean, and the rewards of benificent conduct far exceeded the most sanguine anticipations of benefits to flow from evil practices, might not the broad truth have come home to him, that he is made as conspicuously uncomfortable whose virtues lift him above the common sentiment of society, as he whose vices sink him below the general level?