LEAF AND TENDRIL 



them; the unkind, the hard-hearted, see themselves 

 in their fellows about them. The tone in which we 

 speak to the world, the world speaks to us. Give 

 your best and you will get the best in return. 

 Give in heaping measure and in heaping measure 

 it shall be returned. We all get our due sooner or 

 later, in one form or another. "Be not weary in 

 well doing;" the reward will surely come, if not in 

 worldly goods, then in inward satisfaction, grace of 

 spirit, peace of mind. 



All the best things of my life have come to me 

 unsought, but I hope not unearned. That would 

 contradict the principle of equity I have been illus- 

 trating. A man does not, in the long run, get wages 

 he has not earned. What I mean is that most of 

 the good things of my life — friends, travel, oppor- 

 tunity — have been unexpected. I do not feel that 

 fortune has driven sharp bargains with me. I am 

 not a disappointed man. Blessed is he who expects 

 little, but works as if he expected much. Sufficient 

 unto the day is the good thereof. I have invested 

 myself in the present moment, in the things near 

 at hand, in the things that all may have on equal 

 terms. If one sets one's heart on the exceptional, 

 the far-off — on riches, on fame, on power — the 

 chances are he will be disappointed ; he will waste 

 his time seeking a short cut to these things. There 

 is no short cut. For anything worth having one 

 must pay the price, and the price is always work, 

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