It is so distributed as not to
destroy. That which would rend you, falls on tougher textures. That
which seems intolerable reproach or bereavement, does not take from
the accused or bereaved man or woman appetite or sleep. Some men are
above grief, and some below it. Few are capable of love. In
phlegmatic natures calamity is unaffecting, in shallow natures it is
rhetorical. Tragedy must be somewhat which I can respect. A
querulous habit is not tragedy. A panic such as frequently in
ancient or savage nations put a troop or an army to flight without an
enemy; a fear of ghosts; a terror of freezing to death that seizes a
man in a winter midnight on the moors; a fright at uncertain sounds
heard by a family at night in the cellar or on the stairs; are
terrors that make the knees knock and the teeth chatter, but are no
tragedy, any more than sea-sickness, which may also destroy life. It
is full of illusion. As it comes, it has its support. The most
exposed classes, soldiers, sailors, paupers, are nowise destitute of
animal spirits. The spirit is true to itself, and finds its own
support in any condition, learns to live in what is called calamity,
as easily as in what is called felicity, as the frailest glass-bell
will support a weight of a thousand pounds of water at the bottom of
a river or sea, if filled with the same.
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