I felt almost surer of the future than of the present.
If the dream of the millennium which brightened the somewhat
sombre close of the first ten years of my life had faded a
little, out of the very roughnesses of the intervening road light
had been kindled which made the end of the second ten years glow
with enthusiastic hope. I had early been saved from a great
mistake; for it is the greatest of mistakes to begin life with
the expectation that it is going to be easy, or with the wish to
have it so. What a world it would be, if there were no hills to
climb! Our powers were given us that we might conquer obstacles,
and clear obstructions from the overgrown human path, and grow
strong by striving, led onward always by an Invisible Guide.
Life to me, as I looked forward, was a bright blank of mystery,
like the broad Western tracts of our continent, which in the
atlases of those days bore the title of "Unexplored Regions." It
was to be penetrated, struggled through; and its difficulties
were not greatly dreaded, for I had not lost
"The dream of Doing,--
The first bound in the pursuing.
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