Tell a man of a hundred humdrum lives which run their quiet contented course in this village, and the monotonous unmoving story, or hundred stories, will go in at one ear and out at the other.

Therefore such stories are not told and not remembered.

But that which stirs our pity and terror--the frustrate life, the glorious promise which was not fulfilled, the broken hearts and broken fortunes, and passion, crime, remorse, retribution--all this prints itself on the mind, and every such life is remembered for ever and passed on from generation to generation.

But it would really form only one brief chapter in the long, long history of the village life with its thousand chapters.
The truth is, if we live in fairly natural healthy condition, we are just as happy as the lower animals.

Some philosopher has said that the chief pleasure in a man's life, as in that of a cow, consists in the processes of mastication, deglutition, and digestion, and I am very much inclined to agree with him.