Nothing new, you may truthfully answer, in that. The improvement is one which man, in his cups and his dreams and other seasons of maudlin vision, has always perceived to have just come at last. Now, he exaltedly says to himself, for a clean break with my inadequately wise and brilliant past. Away with that plaguey old list of my things done which should not have been done, and of things left undone which I ought to have done. At the end of popular plays the sympathetic youth who had idled, philandered, or stolen till then would book to the Rand or the Yukon, fully assured that "in that free, outdoor life" one's character is not one's fate any longer; blessed, "out there," are Europe's slackers and wasters, for they shall inherit the earth, or its auriferous parts. Grasshoppers, too, if they drank or resorted to sentimental novels and plays, might have gallant little revolts in their hearts, and chirrup "Down with causation!" and feel cock-sure that some good-natured god would give them a chance of "redeeming their pasts" quite late in autumn, and put in their way a winter provision far ampler than that which crowns the coolie labours of those sorry daughters of Martha, the bees. But, for working this benign miracle in the soul, no other strong waters can equal the early days of a war. If, with unbecoming sobriety, anyone hints, in such days, that causes may still retain some sort of control, he is easily seen to have no drop of true blood in him; base is the slave who fears we must reap as we sowed; shame upon spiritless whispers about any connection between the making of beds and the lying thereon; now they shall see what excellent hothouse grapes will be borne by the fine healthy thistles that we have been planting and watering.