Rarely does a man go down to the verge¹ of the grave, and look into its profound and pregnant depths, without carrying from henceforth traces of the journey. His views of life will be truer, if not sadder, forever afterward³. The laws of moral perspective, though they do not change, will be better understood; so that objects at a distance are no longer dwarfed⁴ to the understanding, however they may appear to the eye. Character becomes the central "point of sight," toward which duty continually draws converging⁵ right lines, by the aid of which happiness, fame, and wealth, fall into their proper places, and assume their true proportions.

Bergan Arling was seated in his office at Savalla. At first sight, it might seem that he was little changed, but a closer inspection⁶ would have awakened⁷ some surprise that the lapse⁸ of little more than a year could have changed him so much. The youthfulness had gone out of his face,—that half-eager, half-wistful look which says so plainly, "The world is all before me, where to choose;"—it was now the face of a man among men, who had found his place and his work, who had grappled with many hard problems, and solved some, who was accustomed to deal with serious subjects in a serious way, and who had withal, a definite rule and object of life. In short, it was informed with a positive and noble individuality, born out of suffering, and not yet wholly oblivious⁹ of the pangs¹⁰ that had given it birth, but certain, in good time, to attain¹¹ to the fulness of an inward joy, which, having a deep wellspring of its own, would be little dependent upon the

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