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MISCELLANEOUS CORRESPONDENCES
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The thoughtful mind only discovers the world to be full of misery and pain in all conditions. No one thinks of associating happiness with the conditions of existence in the lower grades of life. The trees are rooted to the spot and remain perpetually exposed to the inclemency of seasons; they are further subjected to all kinds of afflictions in the shape of cutting, piercing, burning, uprooting and the like. The smaller insects are destroyed by the thousand by the careless movements of their bigger fellow-beings. No one cares for their writhings and suffering. The birds and beasts and fishes are seized and devoured mercilessly by animals and men. Man himself is a constant prey to the fear of death, and lives in perpetual dread of calamity and misfortune. Those even who may be regarded as favourites of fortune are troubled with many kinds of mental and bodily troubles of their own and of their relations and friends. And at the end of a career, even where it has been the least undesirable, there is nothing more comforting than the grave or the burning pyre to look forward to. Death and the blankness of death ever stare the thinking being in the face. Human life is short and the best of its conditions is ephemeral and fleeting; you have hardly celebrated the advent of a joy when its place is taken by affliction in some form or other. Those who are unlucky spend their whole time in crying and lamentations. Their suffering ceases even to excite the pity of the passers-by by its frequency. Some of them actually experience all the excruciating horrors of bell-life without being in hell! Kings and millionaires and potentates are no exceptions; they are subject to the pain and misery which the flesh is heir to. The Teacher, therefore, justly says that
