But alone you must drink life's gall.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
FUTURE
Youth measures the future with the straight, new ruler of the present; Old Age, by the frayed and patched plumb-line of the past.
I announce myself unblushingly and with perfect confidence. Nobody has anything on me.
Nobody can ever supplant me in the affections and desires of men. I am supreme mogul of the universe.
Everybody is working for me. Asking nothing for myself, all men expect everything of me. I withhold nothing and grant as little as I like. Men may doubt fire and the stars, but not me.
Nobody ever saw me, yet I am the one reality. Nobody knows anything about me. So long as time shall last my secret is safe. Yet I am ever on the lips of men. My name is lisped by the toddling infant and chortled by hoary-headed sages.