There is no fixed time in a man's life at which he comes to himself,
and some man never come to themselves at all.  It is a change
reserved for the thoroughly sane and healthy, and for those who can
detach themselves from tasks and drudgery long and often enough to
get, at any rate once and again, a view of the proportions of life
and of the stage and plot of its action.  We speak often with
amusement, sometimes with distaste and uneasiness, of men who "have
no sense of humor," who take themselves too seriously, who are
intense, self-absorbed, over-confident in matters of opinion, or
else go plumed with conceit, proud of we cannot tell what, enjoying,
appreciating, thinking of nothing so much as themselves.  These are
men who have not suffered that wholesome change.  They have not come
to themselves.  If they be serious men, and real forces in the
world, we may conclude that they have been too much and too long
absorbed; that their tasks and responsibilities long ago rose about
them like a flood, and have kept them swimming with sturdy stroke
the years through, their eyes level with the troubled surface--no
horizon in sight, no passing fleets, no comrades but those who
struggled in the flood like themselves.  If they be frivolous,