Explore "The Land of the Hibiscus Blossom" by Hume Nisbet on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
SOMETIMES about the very worst luck which can befall a man is to gain an advantage over his adversary.
Our feelings may be outraged, or our contempt and indignation roused, until we rise up in our righteous wrath and strike out from the shoulder, and what is the result?--satisfaction? Yes, a brief instant of satisfaction, trailing behind it years of regret. We prate of our wrongs and no one listens, or if they do, it is only in order to mock us, or else betray us when our backs are turned. We avenge our injuries, and straightway rises up from the deed, misery or self- contempt in our hearts; the object of our wrath is invested with a halo of pathetic reproach the instant our stroke of justice has descended, because our humanity prevents us from being implacable, as stern justice must be; or else the object is too insignificant for the blow we have given to it, and so the blow recoils directly with double force upon our own heads.