The sombre academics enwrapped in the darkness of the alleys at either hand, and the professors who snored in their staid beds--what mattered they? Away with pompous thinking, when the blood’s jigging. And if they were awake even the most learned of the old gentlemen, with fullest sprinkling of dandruff on collar, shall he explain the thrill that is in the kiss of a woman’s lips, or add a tittle to the glory of it in the explaining, for all his learned researches? It is there, for the getting, and it holds none the more magnificence for the dissecting of it. Youth is theirs but for a fleeting too little while--and the blood is a-jumping--and there is life--and the love of woman--and the laughter of wine--and the joy of song--and pleasant comradeship. Revelry if you will; but the dear earth is for the enjoying. Tush! youth is not for the denying. And there is no time for arguments, or the gladness of life is flown almost before the rubbing of bewildered eyes. God! what it is to breathe! to love God’s design by living it. What hath philosophy done but make the world yawn, thou numbskull dreamer of dreams that shouldst be living dreams? This is life. The miracle is given to you. What is changing water into wine to this? Take it in both hands. Grasp it. Live it. All the thinking of all the academies cannot give you this. Grown old in mere thinking upon life, you shall not call back the blithe days of your youth. Dig your hands deep into the grave of your dead self, and you shall not find the splendid years of the joy of life. Get you up to the uttermost mountains’ tops, dive you to the bottom of the uttermost deeps, you shall not find it. It was yours. Whilst you brooded hesitant how to spend it, it hath slipped your fingers, passed like a sunlit merriment, and become part of a sigh in the eternal mystery. The lordship over vasty continents shall not yield you the glory of it--neither ambition nor riches nor learning nor immortality shall yield you a shred of that which, wholly unasked for, was yours. God! how lavish, how wasteful, thou! Why hug the skeleton of life? Fool! peer thou hard enough: yonder, at the end of all, in the shadows, stands the Reaper--down the roadway grimly smile the sombre mutes standing impatiently by a plumed hearse, expectant of fees. Alike for saint and sinner and gay and sober they smirk. They take your measure. ’Tis waste of time to protest with them. The rascals have the last word. Tush! Go hang to them! So they sing in the tavern on youth’s highway--and toss off the toast--and are merry.