CHAPTER XXI.
THE PHOENIX PARK.
What a glorious thing it is when our first waking thoughts not only dispel some dark, depressing dream, but arouse us to the consciousness of a new and bright career suddenly opening before us, buoyant in hope, rich in promise for the future! Life has nothing better than this.

The bold spring by which the mind clears the depth that separates misery from happiness is ecstasy itself; and then what a world of bright visions come teeming before us,--what plans we form; what promises we make to ourselves in our own hearts; how prolific is the dullest imagination; how excursive the tamest fancy, at such a moment! In a few short and fleeting seconds, the events of a whole life are planned and pictured before us.

Dreams of happiness and visions of bliss, of which all our after-years are insufficient to eradicate the _prestige_, come in myriads about us; and from that narrow aperture through which this new hope pierces into our heart, a flood of light is poured that illumines our path to the very verge of the grave.

How many a success in after-days is reckoned but as one step in that ladder of ambition some boyish review has framed, perhaps, after all, destined to be the first and only one! With what triumph we hail some goal attained, some object of our wishes gained, less for its present benefit, than as the accomplishment of some youthful prophecy, when picturing to our hearts all that we would have in life, we whispered within us the flattery of success.
Who is there who has not had some such moment; and who would exchange it, with all the delusive and deceptive influences by which it comes surrounded, for the greatest actual happiness he has partaken of?
Alas, alas, it is only in the boundless expanse of such imaginations, unreal and fictitious as they are, that we are truly blessed! Our choicest blessings in life come even so associated with some sources of care that the cup of enjoyment is not pure but dregged in bitterness.
To such a world of bright anticipation did I awake on the morning after the events I have detailed in the last chapter.

The first thing my eyes fell upon was an official letter from the Horse Guards:-- "The commander of the forces desires that Mr.O'Malley will report himself, immediately on the receipt of this letter, at the headquarters of the regiment to which he is gazetted." Few and simple as the lines were, how brimful of pleasure they sounded to my ears.