444 MORE POT-POURRI 



' Prom social snares with ease 

 Saved by tliat gracious gift, inaptitude to please. 



'Youth is dead and gone at eight-and-twenty, and 

 one may mourn it for a year or two then ; but at thirty 

 it is time to rise and eat bread, and after fifty one no 

 more desires to be young than one desires to be the 

 Archangel Michael or Henry VIII. One does not desire 

 it, because one cannot conceive it. The past is so long 

 past that it is past being a subject for regret ; and as 

 to the future, one has to look forward to losing one's 

 eyes and ears and brains, and some of the powers of 

 one's stomach, but one has not the loss of youth to 

 look forward to, and that is one source of sadness 

 removed — and to me it used to be, thirty or forty years 

 ago, a source of sadness ; for I was 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 of trouble, and at other times wear my nerves a 

 little. But my main resource is in my business. Act- 

 ing to a purpose with steadiness and regularity is the 

 best support to the spirits and the surest protection 

 against sad thoughts. Realities 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 



