are the greatest of those of any living beings. It follows, it seems to
me, that our responsibilities should be greater, both in justice and in
reason. Every opportunity is equivalent to a duty. We owe--with all
these miracles of the living world centered and perfected in our
bodies,--a duty equally grand and difficult. Let us ennoble ourselves.
John Fletcher wrote a beautiful metaphor in very clumsy verse when he
said:
Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man
Commands all light, all influence, all fate,
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.