'"
"It is the law of nature," said Jephson: "we are not the first party of
young philosophers who have been struck with the fact that one man's
misfortune is another man's opportunity."
"Occasionally, another woman's," I observed.
I was thinking of an incident told me by a nurse. If a nurse in fair
practice does not know more about human nature--does not see clearer into
the souls of men and women than all the novelists in little Bookland put
together--it must be because she is physically blind and deaf. All the
world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; so long as we
are in good health, we play our parts out bravely to the end, acting
them, on the whole, artistically and with strenuousness, even to the
extent of sometimes fancying ourselves the people we are pretending to
be. But with sickness comes forgetfulness of our part, and carelessness
of the impression we are making upon the audience. We are too weak to
put the paint and powder on our faces, the stage finery lies unheeded by
our side. The heroic gestures, the virtuous sentiments are a weariness
to us. In the quiet, darkened room, where the foot-lights of the great
stage no longer glare upon us, where our ears are no longer strained to
catch the clapping or the hissing of the town, we are, for a brief space,
ourselves.
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