He hesitated. "I don't know—but I think so. I've always had a feeling to-morrow'd be a better day than yesterday. I've always felt as if something lay beyond; and when I reached it—and passed it, everything would be different then."
There are few who know it—but the uncertainty of life is life's greatest stimulus. That is, the sense of further possibilities, unexpected happenings, developments not to be foreseen. This is true of the poor, the enslaved, the broken-hearted; it is no less true of the caressed of fortune and the favourites of fate. The veil that hides to-morrow's face is life's chiefesf source of zest, not excepting love itself. Men's hearts would break if they could descry the plain beyond and search its level surface to the end; wherefore the All-wise has broken the long way to fragments, every turn in the road, the long, winding road, a well-spring of hope and expectation. The most dejected heart, proclaim its hopelessness as it may, still cherishes a secret confidence that things cannot always thus remain; downcast and tear-bedimmed, those eyes are still turned towards the morrow, or the morning, or the spring-time—for by such different symbols God would teach us how ill He brooks monotony.
Especially is this true of one who struggles with his sin. Beaten again and again, vows turned to shame and resolutions to reproach, conscience and will trodden under foot of appetite, the wearied warrior still trusts that to-morrow will turn the battle from the gate. Something will turn up; if he could but get a fresh start, or if he could escape from boon companions, or if he were once braced up a bit, or if this did not worry and that beset—all these varied tones does Hope's indomitable voice assume. Sad and pitiful enough, we say; and we smile at what we call the weakness of poor humanity—but it all bears witness to that hopeful anguish which is bred of manifold temptations; it is the earnest expectation of the creature waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.
"Not enough snap about any of this stuff, I tell you, Simmons." The time was an hour and a half after Harvey had bidden Jessie, again Miss Farringall's willing guest, good-bye, and gone forth to his work until the midnight. The words were those of Mr. Timothy Crothers, city editor and director in chief of the Morning Argus. Mr. Crothers had taken off his collar an hour before, which was silently accepted by the staff as a storm-signal of the most accurate kind. Cold let it be without or hot, Mr. Crothers' sanctum soon became a torrid region when once he had removed his neck apparel—and Harvey looked up with more of expectation than surprise, having already witnessed the divestiture.
"It makes a man hot under the collar," Mr. Crothers pursued wrathily, giving a phantom jerk in the neighbourhood of his neck, "to have stuff like this brought in to him; it's as dry as Presbyterian preaching."
"Isn't it true, Mr. Crothers?" Harvey asked, calmly opening his knife and applying it to an exhausted pencil. "That's the first quality for news, isn't it?"
"First qualities be hanged," quoth Mr. Crothers contemptuously. "And it isn't news at all—it's chloroform. Nothing's news that doesn't make people sit up; you'll never make a newspaper man till you learn how to spice things up—lots of pepper, red pepper at that. A paper that can't make 'em sneeze will never earn its salt."
"Are you referring to the report I wrote of the game with the Scotch bowlers, Mr. Crothers?" Harvey enquired, nodding towards a confused cluster of well-scrawled pages on the table.
"Yes, mostly that; you don't make the thing bite. It's nearly all about how they played—and we don't get twenty bowlers here from Scotland every year."
"About how they played!" echoed Harvey. "What else is there?"