A LITTLE PHILOSOPHY _of_ LIFE A LITTLE PHILOSOPHY _of_ LIFE [_By_ ROBERT J. BURDETTE] “_For what is your Life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away._” --JAMES 4; 14. COPYRIGHT, 1914 BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE [Illustration: Clara Vista Press PASADENA, CAL.] TO MY LITTLE GRANDDAUGHTER CLARA BRADLEY WHEELER _Who, with tottering baby steps, is coming in to the entrance of the Stage of Life, just as her Grandfather, with footsteps equally uncertain, is slowly passing out at its Exit. The baby, doubtless wondering much that the World should be so immeasurably large. He certainly, marvelling, as he looks back, that a Stage so small and circumscribed could hold so many people. She looks at her Grandfather with the Wonder-Wisdom in the baby eyes, but she does not know what he is thinking, nor how much he knows. And he, looking at the Little One with the meditative inquiry of Old Age, knows just as little what she is thinking, just as little how much she knows. For a handful of days only have they known one another, each speaking a language strange and incomprehensible to the other. But the two hearts, one old as the ashes of last year’s camp fires, the other young and fragrant as the roses of this June morning, have knitted themselves together with a love that will outlive Time. This is one of the Beautiful Mysteries of Life. “And the Evening and the Morning are another Day.”_ “SUNNYCREST” PASADENA, CALIFORNIA CHRISTMASTIDE, 1913 A LITTLE PHILOSOPHY _of_ LIFE Is there such a thing as a “philosophy of life?” Life is the philosophy of everything; the study of all things; the testing of all things. The lucky man is he who despises luck. The unlucky one is the fellow who worships it. Great inventions may be wrought out in the brain. Great thoughts are born in the heart. One of the best ways to find trouble, my boy, is to carry a revolver without knowing how to use it. Memory may be a hell or a paradise. It depends on whether you spend your youth manufacturing brimstone or planting roses. When I hear a man trying to do all the talking for the crowd, I remember that a drum makes more noise than a cask of sugar, because it is empty. A man is a fool to worry about his “past,” if he has one. A man or woman with a “past” isn’t half so badly off as the sinner who yet has “something coming to him.” I don’t believe in rejecting and despising a man because of his faults. Make them useful to him. For example, a conceited man is like a tire, which is of no earthly account until it is inflated. One of the meanest things about sowing wild oats is that the profligate scatters about half the seed on some good man’s wheat field. And more than half the wild oats turn out to be rye.