The vacillations of a youth are by no means a sign of instability. An unknown world opens up before him, at every step he meets some object, to him, full of novelty. When a prize seems within his grasp he draws back his hands and turns away to enquire into the substance of some fleeting shadow, which seems to him to have all the solidity of a great reality. Disappointments fall upon him, and he loses much that was easily attainable in the pursuit of intangible myths. Yet are these disappointments no loss, they are the lessons by which his ignorance is cleared away, and he grows in knowledge as he grows in years. These disappointments are experience, without which no lesson is perfect.

When the beams of the yet invisible sun brighten the sky in the east, men know that the day is at hand. Yet do these beams often raise up mists from earth, moist with the dews of night, which cover their brilliance as with a veil, throwing out a new shadow of darkness; but that darkness is not of the night, it is the herald of the day. Behind that veil rises up the sun, soon to dissipate those shadows, bathing the earth in the full effulgence of his glory.