Henry MacKenzie

“My dog had made a point on a piece of fallow-ground, and led the curate and me two or three hundred yards over that and some stubble adjoining, in a breathless state of expectation, on a burning first of September.
it was a false point, and our labour was in vain: yet, to do Rover justice, (for he's an excellent dog, though I have lost his pedigree0 the fault was none of his, the birds were gone; the curate shewed me the spot where they had lain basking, at the root of an old hedge.
I stopped and cried Hem! The curate is fatter than I; he wiped the sweat from his brow.
There is no state where one is apter to pause and look round one, than after such a disappointment. It is even so in life. When we have been hurrying on, impelled by some warm wish or other, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left - we find of a sudden that all our gay hopes are flown; and the only slender consolation that some friend can give us, is to point where they were once to be found. And lo! if we are not of that combustible race, who will rather beat their heads in spite, than wipe their brows with the curate, we look around and say, with the nauseated listlessness of the king of Israel, 'All is vanity and vexation of spirit.”
― Henry MacKenzie