It will seem strange only to
the superficial. The disease of pessimism springs never from real
troubles, which it braces men to bear, which it delights men to
bear well. Nor does it readily spring at all, in minds that have
conceived of life as a field of ordered duties, not as a chase in
which to hunt for gratifications. 'We are not here to be happy,
but to be good'; I wish he had mended the phrase: 'We are not here
to be happy, but to try to be good,' comes nearer the modesty of
truth. With such old-fashioned morality, it is possible to get
through life, and see the worst of it, and feel some of the worst
of it, and still acquiesce piously and even gladly in man's fate.
Feel some of the worst of it, I say; for some of the rest of the
worst is, by this simple faith, excluded.
It was in the year 1868, that the clouds finally rose. The
business in partnership with Mr. Forde began suddenly to pay well;
about the same time the patents showed themselves a valuable
property; and but a little after, Fleeming was appointed to the new
chair of engineering in the University of Edinburgh.
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