.

WHAT WE MAY LEARN BY LOOKING OUT OF WINDOW.
March 3d A poet has said that life is the dream of a shadow: he would better have compared it to a night of fever! What alternate fits of restlessness and sleep! what discomfort! what sudden starts! what ever-returning thirst! what a chaos of mournful and confused fancies! We can neither sleep nor wake; we seek in vain for repose, and we stop short on the brink of action.

Two thirds of human existence are wasted in hesitation, and the last third in repenting.
When I say human existence, I mean my own! We are so made that each of us regards himself as the mirror of the community: what passes in our minds infallibly seems to us a history of the universe.

Every man is like the drunkard who reports an earthquake, because he feels himself staggering.
And why am I uncertain and restless--I, a poor day-laborer in the world--who fill an obscure station in a corner of it, and whose work it avails itself of, without heeding the workman?
I will tell you, my unseen friend, for whom these lines are written; my unknown brother, on whom the solitary call in sorrow; my imaginary confidant, to whom all monologues are addressed and who is but the shadow of our own conscience.
A great event has happened in my life! A crossroad has suddenly opened in the middle of the monotonous way along which I was travelling quietly, and without thinking of it.

Two roads present themselves, and I must choose between them.