The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history. - George Eliot

That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind. Many Theresas have been born who found for themselves no epic life wherein there was a constant unfolding of far-resonant action; perhaps only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity; perhaps a tragic failure which found no sacred poet and sank unwept into oblivion.

No farther will I travel: once again My brethren I will see, and that fair plain Where I and song were born. There fresh-voiced youth Will pour my strains with all the early truth Which now abides not in my voice and hands, But only in the soul, the will that stands Helpless to move. My tribe remembering Will cry, "'Tis he!" and run to greet me, welcoming.

If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions, partings, and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.