The Ways of Life; Two Stories
The Ways of Life; Two Stories
By Margaret Oliphant
2 Dec, 2019
Excerpt...........I do not pretend to say that the two stories included in this volume are conscious or intentional studies of the phase of human experience which I can describe in no other way than by calling it the ebb, in contradistinction to that
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Excerpt...........I do not pretend to say that the two stories included in this volume are conscious or intentional studies of the phase of human experience which I can describe in no other way than by calling it the ebb, in contradistinction to that tide in the affairs of men which we all know, is, to those who can identify and seize it, the great turning-point of life, and leads on to fortune. But they were at least produced under the influence of the strange discovery which a man makes when he finds himself carried away by the retiring waters, no longer coming in upon the top of the wave, but going out. This does not necessarily mean the decline of life, the approach of age, or any natural crisis, but something more poignant—the wonderful and overwhelming revelation which one time or other comes to most people, that their career, whatever it may have been, has come to a stop: that such successes as they may have achieved are over, and that henceforward they must accustom themselves to the thought of going out with the tide. Less