"_'What hath pride profited us? Or what good hath riches with our vaunting brought us? All those things are passed away like a shadow, and as a host that hasted by; and as a ship that passeth over the waves of the water, which, when it is gone by, the trace thereof cannot be found, neither the pathway of the keel in the waves; or, as when a bird hath flown through the air, there is no token of her way to be found, but the light air being beaten with the stroke of her wings, and parted with the violent noise and motion of them, or passed through, and therein afterwards no sign where she went is to be found; or like as, when an arrow is shot at a mark, it parteth the air, which immediately cometh together again, so that a man cannot know where it went through: even so we in like manner, as soon as we were born, began to draw to our end.'_ "There's a lot of truth in that," he remarked. "As soon as we are born we begin to draw near to our end. That's mighty true. It kind of makes a man feel small, though, as if nothing mattered. It makes a man feel as though God laughed at him. And it makes me feel, too, as if it would be rather a good thing to be done with it all. If I could be a boy again I wouldn't say. I believe I should think it worth while being kicked and beaten again, just to feel as I did then. But, by the time a man is going on for sixty, he's about tired of it all. Doesn't seem worth while doing anything then, except to get into bed and go to sleep." He paused a moment, as if to swallow some choking bitterness, and then went on again in the same low tone: