The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the
sun.'
So he might have cried, so, indeed, he did cry in other words, for,
as the painting of the skeletons and the three monarchs that is
upon the north wall of the aisle of Ditchingham Church shows forth
so aptly, kings have their fates and happiness is not to them more
than to any other of the sons of men. Indeed, it is not at all, as
my benefactor Fonseca once said to me; true happiness is but a
dream from which we awake continually to the sorrows of our short
laborious day.
Then my thoughts flew to the vision of that most lovely maid, the
 Montezuma's Daughter |