The Strenuous Life 5 



him have worked to good purpose. If the freedom 

 thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does 

 actual work, though of a different kind, whether as 

 a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics 

 or in the field of exploration and adventure, he 

 shows he deserves his good fortune. But if he treats 

 this period of freedom from the need of actual labor 

 as a period, not of preparation, but of mere enjoy 

 ment, even though perhaps not of vicious enjoyment, 

 he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth's 

 surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own 

 with his fellows if the need to do so should again 

 arise. A mere life of ease is not in the end a very 

 satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which 

 ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious 

 work in the world. 



In the last analysis a healthy state can exist only 

 when the men and women who make it up lead clean, 

 vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so 

 trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk diffi 

 culties, but to overcome them ; not to seek ease, but 

 to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk. 

 The man must be glad to do a man's work, to dare 

 and endure and to labor; to keep himself, and to 

 keep those dependent upon him. The woman must 

 be the housewife, the helpmeet of the homemaker, 

 the wise and fearless mother of many healthy chil 

 dren. In one of Daudet's powerful and melancholy 



