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Scalawag on the Web Sectory 05
Page 04
He met, however, with very partial success. His soldiers became entangled in bogs and morasses; they fell into ambuscades; they suffered every degree of privation and hardship for want of water and of food, and were continually entrapped by their enemies in situations where they had to fight in small numbers and at a great disadvantage. Then, too, the aged and feeble general was kept in a continual fever of anxiety and trouble by Bassianus, the son whom he had brought with him to the north. The dissoluteness and violence of his character were not changed by the change of scene. He formed plots and conspiracies against his father's authority; he raised mutinies in the army; he headed riots; and he was finally detected in a plan for actually assassinating his father. Severus, when he discovered this last enormity of wickedness, sent for his son to come to his imperial tent. He laid a naked sword before him, and then, after bitterly reproaching him with his undutiful and ungrateful conduct, he said, "If you wish to kill me, do it now. Here I stand, old, infirm, and helpless. You are young and strong, and can do it easily. I am ready. Strike the blow."
The common English pipe-fish is a good example of the other and much more usual case in which the father alone is actuated by a proper sense of parental responsibility. The pipe-fish, indeed, might almost be described as a pure and blameless rate-payer. No. 6 shows you the outer form of this familiar creature, whom you will recognize at a glance as still more nearly allied to the sea-horses than even the tube-mouth. Pipe-fishes are timid and skulking creatures. Like their horse-headed relations, they lurk for the most part among sea-weed for protection, and being but poor swimmers, never venture far from the covering shelter of their native thicket. But the curious part of them is that in this family the father fish is provided with a pouch even more perfect than that of the female tube-mouth, and that he himself, not his mate takes sole charge of the young, incubates them in his sack, and escorts them about for some time after hatching. The pouch, which is more fully represented in No. 7, is formed by a loose fold of skin arising from either side of the creature. In the illustration this fold is partly withdrawn, so as to show the young pipe-fish within their safe retreat after hatching out. It is said, I know not how truly, that the young fry will stroll out for an occasional swim on their own account, but will return at any threat of danger to their father's bosom, for a considerable time after the first hatching. This is just like what one knows of kangaroos and many other pouched mammals, where the mother's pouch becomes a sort of nursery, or place of refuge, to which the little ones return for warmth or safety after every excursion.
Far from finding the spring and motion of life diminished, I feel that the current of it runs with a sharper and clearer intensity, because I have learned my limitations, and expend no energy in useless enterprises. I have learned what the achievements are which come joyfully bearing their sheaves with them, and what are the trivial and fruitless aims. When I was younger I desired to be known and recognised and deferred to. I wanted to push my way discreetly into many companies, to produce an impression, to create a sense of admiration. Now as the sunset draws nearer, and the enriched light, withdrawn from the farther horizon, begins to pulsate more intensely in the quarter whence it must soon altogether fade, I begin to see that vague and widely ranging effects have a thinness and shallowness about them. It is a poor thing just to see oneself transiently reflected in a hundred little mirrors. There is no touch of reality about that. Little greetings, casual flashes of courteous talk, petty compliments--these are things that fade as soon as they are born. The only thing worth doing is a little bit of faithful and solid work, something given away which costs one real pain, a few ideas and thoughts worked patiently out, a few hearts really enlivened and inspirited. And then, too, comes the consciousness that much of one's cherished labour is of no use at all except to oneself; that work is not a magnificent gift presented to others, but a wholesome privilege conceded to oneself, that the love which brought with it but a momentary flash of self-regarding pleasure is not love at all, and that only love which means suffering--not delicate regrets and luxurious reveries, but hard and hopeless pain--is worth the name of love at all. Those are some of the lights of sunset, the enfolding gleams that are on their way to death, and which yet testify that the light which wanes and lapses here, drawn reluctantly away from dark valley and sombre woodland, is yet striding ahead over dewy uplands and breaking seas, past the upheaving shoulder of the world.
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