Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/21

 creep, for unanswerable reasons. I don't even think I shall freeze the marrow in your bones. I could tell you some strange stories, but I dare say your own experiences are more remarkable than mine. I will only ask you to reflect on the amount of suffering that came under our daily notice when we lived in the world, and say whether every pang of mind or body, every tear shed or swallowed down, every groan indulged or repressed, were anything but sheer waste? Can you not recall a hundred instances of strength sapped by drink, of intellect warped by madness, of beauty fading under neglect, or withered by disappointment? Here a pair of lives are wasted because they must needs run out their course in different grooves—there two more are utterly thrown away, because, encompassed in a golden link, they can by no means shake themselves free. The fairest of all, it may be,