434 MORE POT-POURRI 



very fond of my youth, and cared more for it than for 

 eyes, ears, brains, stomach, and all the rest. Now they 

 have a fair share of my regard, and I shall be sorry for 

 their decay. I think you make too much of my imagination 

 as a resource. It is true that from time to time I join a 

 party of phantoms, and find them pleasant to live with on 

 the whole, though they sometimes give me a good deal cf 

 trouble, and at other times wear my nerves a little. But 

 my main resource is in my business. Acting to a purpose 

 with steadiness and regularity is the best support to the 

 spirits and the surest protection against sad thoughts. 

 Eealities can contend with realities better than phantoms 

 can . . . For the rest, Sydney Smith's precept is " Take 

 short views of life." Henry Taylor expressed the same 

 thing : 



Foresight is a melancholy gift 



Which bares the bald and speeds the all-too-swift. 



' To invest one's personal interests in the day that is 

 passing, and to project one's future interests into the 

 children that are growing up, is the true policy of self-love 

 in the decline of life, and as commendable a policy as it 

 is in the nature of self-love to adopt.' 



I have recommended no books for girls. The question 

 is much too big a one. But I cannot refrain from saying 

 that within the compass of one small book I know 

 nothing that comes up in wisdom and sagacity to Emer- 

 son's essays called ' The Conduct of Life ' and * Society 

 and Solitude.' He says : ' Youth has an access of sensi- 

 bility before which every object glitters and attracts. We 

 leave one pursuit for another, and the young man's year 

 is a heap of beginnings. At the end of a twelvemonth he 

 has nothing to show for it, not one completed work. But 

 the time is not lost.' If this is true of young men, it is 

 doubly true of young women. Every experience is a 

 growth, and every growth tends towards completion of 



