Page:The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, a Book for an Idle Holiday - Jerome (1886).djvu/38

 eternal silence—were put into the heavens to make the sky look interesting for us at night. And the moon, with its dark mysteries and ever hidden face, is an arrangement for us to flirt under.

I fear we are most of us like Mrs Poyser's bantam cock, who fancied the sun got up every morning to hear him crow. Tis vanity that makes the world go round." I don't believe any man ever existed without vanity, and, if he did, he would be an extremely uncomfortable person to have anything to do with. He would, of course, be a very good man, and we should respect him very much. He would be a very admirable man—a man to be put under a glass case, and shown round as a specimen—a man to be stuck upon a pedestal, and copied, like a school exercise—a man to be reverenced, but not a man to be loved, not a human brother whose hand we should care to grip. Angels may be very excellent sort of folk in their way, but we, poor mortals, in our present state, would probably find them precious slow company. Even mere good people are rather depressing. It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch one another, and find sympathy. We differ widely enough in our nobler qualities. It is in our follies that we are at one. Some of us are pious, some of us are generous. Some few of us are honest, comparatively speaking; and some, fewer still, may possibly be truthful. But in vanity and kindred weaknesses we can all join