text:  How willing I felt to love and how gay a place was earth with her constant sun and overflowing lap and her thousand joys for man! And how intense was the fire of _hope_ that burned within me--fed with new fuel every passing hour and how abiding and how beautiful _the future_! THE FUTURE! and it was here--a nothing--a dream--a melancholy phantasm! There are seasons of adversity in which the mind plunged in despondency and gloom is startled and distressed by pictures of a happier time that travel far to fool and tantalize the suffering heart