Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1881 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

y^s Triplex. 179
with the regulated temperature ; and the tin
shoes go equably forward over blood and rain.
To be overwise is to ossify ; and the scruple-
monger ends by standing stockstill. Now the
man who has his heart on his sleeve, and a good
whirling weathercock of a brain, who reckons
his life as a thing to be dashingly used and
cheerfully hazarded, makes a very different
acquaintance of the world, keeps all his pulses
going true and fast, and gathers impetus as he
runs, until, if he be running towards anything
better than wildfire, he may shoot up and
become a constellation in the end. Lord look
after his health, Lord have a care of his soul,
says he ; and he has at the key of the position,
and swashes through incongruity and peril
towards his aim. Death is on all sides of him
with pointed batteries, as he is on all sides of
all of us ; unfortunate surprises gird him round ;
mim-mouthed friends and relations hold up their
hands in quite a little elegiacal synod about his