PREFACE 



As a man gets on in life, and his responsibilities, and with 

 them his anxieties, increase as, except in the case of the 

 favoured few, they must do until he is far enough down 

 the hill to shift some of them on to younger and stronger 

 shoulders nothing is more to be dreaded than the narrow- 

 ing effects of long habit. If he has nothing to carry his 

 thoughts out, they will centre on himself and his real or 

 imaginary troubles. 



It is not work so much as worry that breaks a man 

 down. 



In Endymion, when the hero's father found money diffi- 

 culties gathering round him, and his political hopes failed 

 at what had seemed the very moment of realisation, 'he 

 found refuge,' writes the author, 'in suicide, as many do, 

 from want of imagination.' 



The power which could convey Lord Beaconsfield himself, 

 at the time of a crushing defeat, back to the clipped yew 

 hedges and formal terraces of the Bradenham of his boyhood, 

 and enable him there to forget himself in the hopes and fears 

 of beings of his own creation, is a gift of the gods to the 

 few. The best substitute, for less gifted mortals, is the 

 possession of a Hobby. It does not matter much what it is 

 railway-ticket collecting may do as well for some people 

 as astronomy for others if only strong enough, when called 



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