Twice he had sold almost palatial residences,
because their architectural attractions were thrown into the shade
by dwellings of later construction. Thousands of dollars each year
this troublesome guest cost him; and yet she would never let him be
at ease. At every feast of life she dashed his cup with bitterness,
and robbed the choicest viands of their zest. He did not enjoy the
fame of an author, an orator, an artist, a man of science, a
general, or of any who held the world's admiring gaze--for while
they stood in the sunlight, he felt cast in the shade. So the guest
Envy, warmed and nourished in his heart, proved a tormentor. She
gave him neither rest nor peace.
Detraction, twin-sister of Envy, was all the while pointing out
defects in friends and neighbors. He saw their faults and hard
peculiaries; but rarely their good qualities. Then Doubt and
Distrust crept in through the unguarded door, and soon after their
entrance Markland began to think uneasily of the future; to fear
lest the foundations of worldly prosperity were not sure. These
troublesome guests were busiest in the night season, haunting his
mind with strange pictures of disasters, and with suggestions
touching the arbitrary power of God, whom he feared when the thought
of him was present, but did not love. "Whom He will He setteth up,
and whom He will He casteth down." Doubt and Distrust revived this
warning in his memory, and seeing that it gave his heart a throb of
pain, they set it close to his eyes, so that, for a time, he could
see nothing else.
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