Page:Romance & Reality 2.pdf/244

242 and why, without any volition of our own, do we suddenly recall things, people, places, we know not why or wherefore? Sometimes that very remembrance will haunt us like a ghost, and quite as causelessly, which at another time is a blank. Alas for love! whose very existence depends on a faculty over which we have so little control." "It is a curious fact," replied Mr. Morland, "that those events which are of the greatest consequence are not the best remembered; the stirring and important acts of our manhood do not rise on the mind half so vividly as the simple and comparatively uninteresting occurrences of childhood. And another observation is, that we never remember any thing accurately, I should rather say exactly, as it happened." "For my part," exclaimed Edward, "I am often tempted to liken our mental world to a shadow flung on water from some other world—broken, wavering and of uncertain brightness." "Well, well, as they said to the lover of the beautiful Indian queen, when he was turned into a dog, 'your misfortune is irreparable, so have patience.' In this world we must live for the present at least; but I own I think it is made up of odds and ends."