And I make answer, ‘I am satisfied;
I dare not ask; I know not what is best;
God hath already said what shall betide.’”
There is never, observes Madame d’Arblay, in her diary, such a superfluity of actual happiness as to make it either rational or justifiable to feed upon expected misery. “That portion of philosophy which belongs to making the most of the present day, grows upon me strongly; and, as I have suffered infinitely from its neglect, it is what I most encourage, and, indeed, require.” Kindly ordained, she takes it, is the concealment of
“the day of sorrow;
And enough is the present tense of toil—
For this world, to all, is a stiffish soil—
And the mind flies back with a glad recoil
From the debts not due till to-morrow.”