And when I have completed this task, I will throw myself like a waif upon the waters of life. I will be that which the moment or the event shall make me,--neither trammelled by the past nor awed by the future. I will take the world as the drama of a day. Were men to do this, what breadth and generosity would it impart to them! It is in self-seeking and advancement that we narrow our faculties and imprison our natures. A man fancies he owns a palace and a demesne, but it is the palace that owns _him_, obliges him to maintain a certain state, live in a certain style, surrounded with certain observances, not one of which may be, perhaps, native to him. It is the poor man, who comes to visit and gaze on his splendors, who really enjoys them; _he_ sees them without one detracting influence,--not to say that in _his_ heart are no corroding jealousies of some other rich man, who has a finer Claude, or a grander Rubens. Instead, besides, of owning one palace and one garden, it is the universe he owns: the vast savannah is his race-ground; Niagara his own private cascade. My heart bounded with these buoyant fancies, and I stepped out briskly on my road. Now that I had made this vow of poverty to myself, I felt very light-hearted and gay. So long as a man is struggling for place and pre-eminence in life, how can he be generous, how even gracious? “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's ox,” says the commandment, but surely it must have been your neighbor's before it was yours, and if you have striven for it, it is likely that you have coveted it. Now, I will covet nothing,--positively nothing,--and I will see if in this noble spirit there will not be a reward proportionately ample and splendid.