They are not useless because unattainable.Life is not a failure because they are never attained.God Himself requires of us the unattainable: 'Be ye perfect, even as I am perfect! He could not do less.He commands perfection, He forgives us that we are not perfect! Nor does He count us failures because we have to be forgiven.Our ideals also demand of us perfection--the impossible; but because we come far short of this we have no right to count ourselves as failures.What are they like--ideals such as these? They are like light-houses.But light-houses are not made to live in; neither can we live in such ideals.I suppose they are meant to shine on us from afar, when the sea of our life is dark and stormy, perhaps to remind us of a haven of hope, as we drift or sink in shipwreck.All of your ideals are lighthouses.
"But there are ideals of another sort; it is these that you lack.As we advance into life, out of larger experience of the world and of ourselves, are unfolded the ideals of what will be possible to us if we make the best use of the world and of ourselves, taken as we are.Let these be as high as they may, they will always be lower than those others which are perhaps the veiled intimations of our immortality.These will always be imperfect; but life is not a failure because they are so.It is these that are to burn for us, not like light-houses in the distance, but like candles in our hands.
For so many of us they are too much like candles!--the longer they burn, the lower they burn, until before death they go out altogether! But I know that it will not be thus with you.At first you will have disappoint-ments and sufferings--the world on one side, unattainable ideals of perfection on the other.But by degrees the comforting light of what you may actually do and be in an imperfect world will shine close to you and all around you, more and more.It is this that will lead you never to perfection, but always toward it."He bowed his head: the only answer he could make.
It was getting late.The sun at this moment passed behind the western tree-tops.It was the old customary signal for him to go.They suddenly looked at each other in that shadow.
"I shall always think of you for your last words to me," he said in a thick voice, rising.
"Some day you will find the woman who will be a candle," she replied sadly, rising also.Then with her lips trembling, she added piteously:
"Oh, if you ever marry, don't make the mistake of treating the woman as an ideal Treat her in every way as a human being exactly like yourself! With the same weakness, the same strug-les, the same temptations! And as you have some mercy on yourself despite your faults, have some mercy on her despite hers.""Must I ever think of you as having been weak and tempted as I have been?"he cried, the guilty blood rushing into his face in the old struggle to tell her everything.
"Oh, as for me--what do you know of me!" she cried, laughing.And then more quickly:
"I have read your face! What do you read in mine?"He looked long into it:
"All that I have most wished to see in the face of any woman--except one thing!""What is that? But don't tell me!"
She turned away toward the garden gate.In silence they passed out--walking toward the edge of the clearing.Half-way she paused.He lifted his hat and held out his hand.She laid hers in it and they gave each other the long clinging grasp of affection."Always be a good man," she said, tightening her grasp and turning her face away.
As he was hurrying off, she called to him in a voice full of emotion:
"Come back!"
He wheeled and walked towards her blindly.
She scanned his face, feature by feature.
"Take off your hat!" she said with a tremulous little laugh.He did so and she looked at his forehead and his hair.
"Go now, dear friend!" she said calmly but quickly.
