The
first thing that made her aware she was not quite happy was the
discovery that novels were losing their charm, that they were not
sufficient to make her day pass, that they were only dessert, and
she had no dinner. When it came to difficulty in going on with a
new one long enough to get interested in it, she sighed heavily,
and began to think that perhaps life was rather a dreary thing--
at least considerably diluted with the unsatisfactory. How many
of my readers feel the same! How few of them will recognize that
the state of things would indeed be desperate were it otherwise!
How many would go on and on being only butterflies, but for
life's dismay! And who would choose to be a butterfly, even if
life and summer and the flowers were to last for ever!
"I would," I fancy this and that reader saying.
"Then," I answer, "the only argument you are equal to, is the
fact that life nor summer nor the flowers do last for ever."
"I suppose I am made a butterfly," do you say? "seeing I prefer
to be one."
"Ah! do you say so, indeed? Then you begin to excuse yourself,
and what does that mean? It means that you are no butterfly, for
a butterfly--no, nor an angel in heaven--could never begin
excusing the law of its existence. Butterfly-brother, the hail
will be upon you."
I may not then pity Letty that she had to discover that novels
taken alone serve one much as sweetmeats _ad libitum_ do
children, nor that she had to prove that life has in it that
spiritual quinine, precious because bitter, whose part it is to
wake the higher hunger.
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