Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/165

 that even Launcelot, the flower of chivalry, the brave, the courteous, the gentle, the sorrowing and the sinful, must have sought for it there in vain.

Everybody begins life with, a four-leaved shamrock in view, an ideal of his own, that he follows up with considerable wrong-headedness to the end. Such fiction has a great deal to answer for in the way of disappointment, dissatisfaction, and disgust. Many natures find themselves completely soured and deteriorated before middle age, and why? Because, forsooth, they have been through the garden with no better luck than their neighbours. I started in business, we will say, with good connections, sufficient capital, and an ardent desire to make a fortune. Must I be a saddened, morose, world-wearied man because missing that unaccountable rise in muletwist, and taking the subsequent fall in grey shirtings too late, I