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 illustrating. 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, opportunity 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 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,

the

patience, love, self-sacrifice — no paper currency, no promises to pay, but the gold of real service.

I am not decrying ambition, the aiming high, only there is no use aiming unless you are loaded, and it is the loading, and the kind of material to be used, that one is first to be solicitous about.

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Serene I fold my hands and wait;" but if I have waited one day, I have hustled the next. If I have had faith that my own would come to me, I have tried to make sure that it was my own, and not that of another. Waiting with me has been mainly a cheerful acquiescence in the order of the universe as I found it a faith in the essential veracity of things. I have waited for the sun to rise and for the seasons to come; I have waited for a chance to put in my oar. Which Which way do the currents of my being set? What do I love that is worthy and of good report? I will extend myself in this direction; I will annex this territory. I will not wait to see if this or that pays, if this or that notion draws the multitude. I will wait only till I can see my way clearly. In the meantime I will be clearing my eyes and training them to know the real values of life when they see them.

Waiting for some one else to do your work, for what you have not earned to come to you, is to murder time. Waiting for something to turn up is equally poor policy, unless you have already set the currents going that will cause a particular some

thing to turn up. The farmer waits for his harvest after he has sown the seed. The sailor waits for a breeze after he has spread his sail. Much of life is taken up in waiting - fruitful waiting.

I never have sought wealth, I have been too much absorbed in enjoying the world about me. I had no talent for business anyhow - for the cutthroat competition that modern business for the most part is and probably could not have attained wealth had I desired it. I dare not aver that I had really rather be cheated than to cheat, but I am quite sure I could never knowingly overreach a man, and what chance of success could such a tenderfoot have in the conscienceless struggle for money that goes on in the business world? I am a fairly successful farmer and fruit-grower. I love the soil, I love to see the crops grow and mature, but the marketing of them, the turning of them into money, grinds my soul because of the sense of strife and competition that pervades the air of the market-place. If one could afford to give one's fruit away, after he had grown it to perfection, to people who would be sure to appreciate it, that would be worth while, and would leave no wounds. But that is what I have in a sense done with my intellectual products. I have not written one book for money (yes, one, and that was a failure); I have written them for love, and the modest sum they have brought me has left no sting.

I look upon this craze for wealth that possesses nearly all classes in our time as one of the most lamentable spectacles the world has ever seen. The old prayer, "Give me neither poverty nor riches," is the only sane one. The grand mistake we make is in supposing that because a little money is a good thing, unlimited means is the sum of all good, or that our happiness will keep pace with the increase of our possessions. But such is not the case, because the number of things we can really make our own is limited. We cannot drink the ocean be we ever so thirsty. A cup of water from the spring is all we need. A friend of mine once said that if he outlived his wife, he should put upon her tombstone, "Died of Things" — killed by the multitude of her possessions. The number of people who are thus killed is no doubt very great. When Thoreau found that the specimens and curiosities that had accumulated upon his mantel-piece needed dusting, he pitched them out of the window.

The massing of a great fortune is a perilous enterprise. The giving away of a great fortune is equally a perilous enterprise, not to the man who gives itit ought to be salutary to him- but to his beneficiaries.

Very many of the great fortunes of our time have been accumulated by a process like that of turning all the streams into your private reservoir: they have caused a great many people somewhere to be short

of water, and have taken away the power of many busy, peaceful wheels. The ideal condition is an even distribution of wealth. When you try to give away your monstrous fortune, to open your dam, then danger begins, because you cannot return the waters to their natural channels. You must make new channels, and you may do more harm than good. It never can go now where it would have gone. The wealth is in a measure redistributed, without enriching those from whom it originally came. Few millionaires could face the questions: Have you rendered a service to your fellows in proportion to your wealth? Have you earned your fortune, or have you grabbed it? Is it an addition to the wealth of the world, or a subtraction from the wealth which others have earned? The wealth that comes to a man through his efforts in furthering the work of the world and promoting the good of all is the only worthy wealth.

Beyond the point of a moderate competency, wealth is a burden. A man may possess a competency; great wealth possesses him. He is the victim. It fills him with unrest; it destroys or perverts his natural relations to his fellows; it corrupts his simplicity; it thrusts the false values of life before him; it gives him power which it is dangerous to exercise; it leads to self-indulgence; it hardens the heart; it fosters a false pride. To give it away is perilous; to keep it is to invite care and vexation of