What is to be done to prevent this acrid look of misery from becoming an organic characteristic of our people? "Make them play more," says one philosophy. No doubt they need to "play more;" but, when one looks at the average expression of a Fourth of July crowd, one doubts if ever so much multiplication of that kind of holiday would mend the matter. No doubt we work for too many days in the year, and play for too few; but, after all, it is the heart and the spirit and the expression that we bring to our work, and not those that we bring to our play, by which our real vitality must be tested and by which our faces will be stamped. If we do not work healthfully, reasoningly, moderately, thankfully, joyously, we shall have neither moderation nor gratitude nor joy in our play. And here is the hopelessness, here is the root of the trouble, of the joyless American face. The worst of all demons, the demon of unrest and overwork, broods in the very sky of this land. Blue and clear and crisp and sparkling as our atmosphere is, it cannot or does not exorcise the spell. Any old man can count on the fingers of one hand the persons he has known who led lives of serene, unhurried content, made for themselves occupations and not tasks, and died at last what might be called natural deaths. "What, then?" says the congressional candidate from Mettibemps; the "new contributor" to the oceanic magazine; Mrs. Potiphar, from behind her liveries; and poor Dives, senior, from Wall Street; "Are we to give up all ambition?" God forbid. But, because one has a goal, must one be torn by poisoned spurs? We see on the Corso, in the days of the Carnival, what speed can be made by horses under torture. Shall we try those methods and that pace on our journeys?