There is a tale in Tacitus of how the veterans mutinied
in the German wilderness; of how they mobbed Ger-
manicus, clamouring to go home; and of how, seizing
their general's hand, these old, war-worn exiles passed
his finger along their toothless gums. Sunt lacrymæ
rerum: this was the most eloquent of the songs of
Simeon. And when a man has lived to a fair age,
he bears his marks of service. He may have never been
remarked upon the breach at the head of the army; at
least he shall have lost his teeth on the camp bread.

The idealism of serious people in this age of ours is of
a noble character. It never seems to them that they
have served enough; they have a fine impatience of
their virtues. It were perhaps more modest to be singly
thankful that we are no worse. It is not only our enemies,
those desperate characters--it is we ourselves who know
not what we do;--thence springs the glimmering hope
that perhaps we do better than we think: that to scramble
through this random business with hands reasonably
clean, to have played the part of a man or woman with
some reasonable fulness, to have often resisted the
diabolic, and at the end to be still resisting it, is for the
poor human soldier to have done right well. To ask to
see some fruit of our endeavour is but a transcendental
way of serving for reward; and what we take to be con-
tempt of self is only greed of hire.

And again if we require so much of ourselves, shall
we not require much of others? If we do not genially
judge our own deficiencies, is it not to be feared we shall
be even stern to the trespasses of others? And he who
(looking back upon his own life) can see no more than
that he has been unconscionably long a-dying, will he not

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