I think they are inclined to praise it, as a whole--to indorse it merely
as a sensation, a passing gratification. It has always, on the contrary,
seemed to me like an exquisitely painful means to an exquisitely
beautiful end. The warm genial love of the home--the love which is as an
open grate, cheerful, and which is without those thunderstorms needful
to clear the heavily charged atmosphere of youthful love--pleases and
repays me for "the dangers I have passed." "The greatest pleasure of
life is love," says Sir William Temple. "Love is like the hunter," says
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "who cares not for the game when once caught,
which he may have pursued with the most intense and breathless
eagerness." This is true of only a minority of the hunters. I have more
frequently bought additional fish than thrown away those I have caught.
Why? Because the weariness and difficulty of catching two or three rock
bass had impressed me with the value of a whole string of fish. You have
seen