Go, therefore, my friends--all you who are so situated as to be
able to avail yourselves of this privilege--go and see for
yourselves how greatly we are bound by prejudices, how checkered
and uncertain are many of our own advances, how very nearly all is
balanced. No nation has all that is best, neither is any bereft of
some advantages, and no nation, or tribe, or people is so unhappy
that it would be willing to exchange its condition for that of any
other. See, also, that in every society there are many individuals
distinguished for traits of character which place them upon a par
with the best and highest we know at home, and that such are
everywhere regarded with esteem, and held up as models for lower
and baser natures to emulate.
The traveller will not see in all his wanderings so much abject,
repulsive misery among human beings in the most heathen lands, as
that which startles him in his civilized Christian home, for
nowhere are the extremes of wealth and poverty so painfully
presented. He will learn, too, if he be observant, that very
little is required after all to make mankind happy, and that the
prizes of life worth contending for are, generally speaking,
within the reach of the great mass.
Did you ever sum up these prizes and think how very little the
millionaire has beyond the peasant, and how very often his
additions tend not to happiness but to misery! What constitutes
the choice food of the world? Plain beef, common vegetables and
bread, and the best of all fruits--the apple; the only nectar
bubbles from the brook without money and without price.
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