THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



and let those who love peace disarm for peace: the 

 disarming will hasten it. 



I know that all this clamor and competition, all 

 this heat and friction and turmoil of the world, are 

 only the result of the fury with which we play the 

 game of our civilization. It is like our college foot- 

 ball, which is brutal and killing, and more like war 

 than like sport. Why should I be more than an 

 amused or a pained spectator? 



I was never a fighter; I fear that at times I may 

 have been a shirker, but I have shirked one thing 

 or one duty that I might the more heartily give 

 myself to another. He also serves who sometimes 

 runs away. 



From the summit of the years I look back over 

 my life, and see what I have escaped and what I 

 have missed, as a traveler might look back over his 

 course from a mountain-top, and see where he had 

 escaped a jungle or a wilderness or a desert, and 

 where he had missed a fair field or a fountain, or 

 pleasant habitations. I have escaped the soul- 

 killing and body-wrecking occupations that are the 

 fate of so many men in my time. I have escaped the 

 greed of wealth, the "mania of owning things," as 

 Whitman called it. I have escaped the disappoint- 

 ment of political ambition, of business ambition, 

 of social ambition; I have never lost myself in the 

 procession of parties, or trained with any sect or 

 clique. I have been fortunate in being allowed to go 

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