242 LITEEAEY VALUES 



We want to go ahead, but of what is behind us we 

 have had our fill. What is the feeling we have 

 when we meet a crowd pressing into the show as we 

 are coming out, or when we see our eager friends 

 embarking for Europe as we again set foot on our 

 native shore ? Do we not have a kind of pity 

 for them ? Do we not feel that we have taken the 

 cream and that they will find only the skimmed 

 milk ? We think of the world as moving on, every- 

 body and everything as pressing forward. To live 

 our lives over again would be to go far to the rear. 

 It would be to give up the present and all that it 

 holds ; it would be a kind of death. 



Take from life all novelty, newness, surprise, hope, 

 expectation, and what have you left ? Nothing but 

 a cold pancake, which even the dog hesitates over. 

 One's life is full of routine and repetition, but then 

 it is always a new day ; it is always the latest time ; 

 we are on the crest of the foremost wave ; we are 

 perpetually entering a new and untried land. I am 

 told that lecturers do not weary of repeating the same 

 lecture over and over, because they always have a 

 new audience. The routine of our lives is endur- 

 able because, as it were, we always have a new audi- 

 ence ; this day is the last birth of time and its face 

 no man has before seen. Life becomes stale to us 

 when we cease to feel any interest in the new day, 

 when the night does not re-create us, when we are 

 not in some measure born afresh each morning. As 

 age comes on we become less and less capable of re- 

 newal by rest and sleep, and so gradually life loses 



