To stand face to face with the insoluble
is not pleasant. A man will do anything rather than confess it is
beyond him. He will create pleasant fictions, and fancy a possible
escape here and there, but this problem of Drury Lane was round and
hard like a ball of adamant. The only thing I could do was faintly,
and I was about to say stupidly, hope--for I had no rational,
tangible grounds for hoping--that some force of which we are not now
aware might some day develop itself which will be able to resist and
remove the pressure which sweeps and crushes into a hell, sealed from
the upper air, millions of human souls every year in one quarter of
the globe alone.
M'Kay's dreams therefore were not realised, and yet it would be a
mistake to say that they ended in nothing. It often happens that a
grand attempt, although it may fail--miserably fail--is fruitful in
the end and leaves a result, not the hoped for result it is true, but
one which would never have been attained without it. A youth strives
after the impossible, and he is apt to break his heart because he has
never even touched it, but nevertheless his whole life is the sweeter
for the striving; and the archer who aims at a mark a hundred yards
away will send his arrow further than he who sets his bow and his arm
for fifty yards.
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