Year: 1875

| lhe strongest human passion!


| GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS,


BY THE AUTHOR OF 6 JOHN HALIFAX, GEN
| TLEMAN.'


How MANY lives are, so to speak, mere
relies of an ended feast, fragments which
may be either left to waste or be taken up
andmade the most of For we cannot die
just when we wish it and because we
wish it. The fact may be very
unromantic, but it is a fact, that too
large dinner or Il false step on the stairs
kills much more easily than great sor-
row. Nature compels us to live on, even
with broken hearts, as with Topped off
members. True, we are never quite the
same again, never the complete human
being; but we may still be very respect
able, healthy human being, capable of liv-
ing out our threescore years and ten with
! tolerablc comfort after ALL.


These fragments of lives, how they
suew our daily path on every side! Not
a house do we enter, not company do we
| mix with, but we more than guess-we
! 17aoac-that these our friends, men and
| women, who go about the world doing
their work and taking their pleasure
therein, all carry about them a secret bur
den-of bitter disappointments, vanished
Probably every one of them, when his or



her smiling face vanishes from the circle,
will change it into another, serious, anx-
ious, sad-happy if it be only sad, with
no mingling of either bitterness or bad
ness. That complete felicity which the
young believe in and expect almost as a
matter of certainty to come never does
come Soon or late we have to make up
our minds to do without it, to take up the
fragments of our blessings, thankful that
we have what we have and are what we
are; above all that we have our own bur
den to bear and not our neighbor's. But
whatever it is we must bear it alone; and
this gathering up of fragments which am
so earnestly advising is also thing which
must be done alone.


The lesson is sometimes learned very
early 1t is shrewdly said: q At three we
love our mothers, at six our fathers, at
twelve our holidays, at twenty our sweet
hearts, at thirty our wives, at forty our
children, at fifty ourselves" Still, in one
form or other, love is the groundwork of
our existence.


So at least thinks the passionate boy or
sentimental girl who has fallen under its
influence. For l suppose we must all
concede the everyday fact that most peo-
pie fall in love some time or other, and
that good many do it even in their teens.
You may call it "calf love-" and so it
often is, and comes to the salutary end of
such passion


Which does at once, like paper set on fire,


Burn-and expire.


But it gives certain amount of pain
and discomfort during the contiagration,
and often leaves an ugly little heap of
ashes behind. f zes


Also, it is well to be cautious, as the
foolishest of fancies may develop into a
real love-the blessing or curse of life
time.


Pond of her?'' | heard an old man
once answer, as he stood watching his
wife move slowly down their beautiful but
rather lonely garden-they had buried
eight of their nine children, and the ninth
was going to be married that spring


fond ofher?" with a gentle smile; ''why,
I've been fond OF her these fifty yearsn'
But such cases are very exceptional. 1t


seldom that one love-a happy love
runs like golden thread through the lite
of either man or woman that we ought to
be patient even with the most frantic boy
or forlorn girl who has " fallen in love-
and is enduring its first sharp pleasure, or
pain, for both are much alike.


When they come and tell you that their
hearts are broken, it is best not to laugh
at them, but to help them to gather up
the fragments" as soon as possible. At
first, of course, they will not agree that it
is possible ''This or nothingp' is the
despairins cry; and though we may hint
that the world is wide, and there may be
in it other people at least as good as the
one particular idol, still we cannot ex-
pect them to believe 1t. Disappointed
lovers would think it treason against love
to suppose that life is to be henceforward
anything than a total blank. 1t is so
sometimes, Heaven knows! confess to
being one of those few who in this age
dare still to believe in love, and in its aw-
full influence for good or for evil, at the
very outset of life. But it is not the whole
of life-nor ought to be.


The prevention of a so-called impru-
dent'' marriage-namely, an impecunious
one-and the forcing on of another which
had nothing in the world to recommend
it except money has often been the ulti-
mate ruin of young man, who would
have been good man had he been hap
py man, had he married the girl he loved.
And in instances too numerous to count
have girls-through the common but con-
temptible weakness of not knowing their
own minds, or the worse than weakness of
being governed by the minds Of others in
so exclusively personal matter as mar
riage-driyen honest fellows into vice, or
else into some reckless, hasty union,
whereby both the man himself and the
poor wife, whom he never loved but only
married, were made miserable for life.
Generally speaking men get over their
loye-sorrows much easier than women
naturally, because life has for them many
other things besides love, for women al