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themselves, crush their half-shaped, might-have-been-bright answers, utter the remembered commonplaces, and do the little kindnesses, and are true to their circumscribed sphere of duty. These are the heroes of average life, the brave men and women who talk of the weather, and children, and business, and read the papers, and train themselves to suppression of all vague, beautiful dreams of self-possibilities. Grinding their souls into peace by repetition of their futilities at home, at school, and in society, by the time they are twenty-five or thirty years of age they have forgotten that there is aught but duty, except for the spasms that come as some poem or grand burst of music wakens again the struggle, — never a jealous one, only bitter, and always conquered by humility and duty, — gentle, inflexible, solacing duty.

In spite of this pain that comes to some, contentment and sense of responsibility are the prominent characteristics of average people;