It is the indestructible evidence of man's permanent belief in just government of the universe. It is the most hopeful, the most promising feature of man's character. For THANKFULNESS itself we should be thankful. ---- If you want to succeed, cultivate a feeling of hopeful thankfulness. Hopefulness, thankfulness and success are as near akin as light, heat and motion--the same force underlies, makes up the first trio, as it does the second. If you find it hard to be thankful, read a little of history, and thankfulness will come. Thousands of millions of men have lived and suffered to make your existence here at least bearable. You may not be satisfied, but you have comforts that were not dreamed of by the luckiest a few centuries back. You think the prosperous have too many privileges. Perhaps they have. But when your great-grandfather was a young man a nobleman could order his lackeys to seize Voltaire the greatest mind in Europe--and beat him almost to death. Voltaire was locked up in the Bastile for complaining. Thanks to the eternal row that Voltaire kicked up, you can never be treated as he was. So be thankful to Voltaire. Be thankful to the long line of plucky men and fighters--not forgetting Christopher Columbus--who have gone before you. Be thankful that you are alive in an interesting age with interesting events happening. Be thankful also that with thankfulness you combine the feeling of dissatisfaction, of unrest that will push you ahead and give you cause for fresh thankfulness next year. ---- We are thankful to have you for a reader. We are thankful for the criticisms and friendly comments that you occasionally send. We hope that you will enjoy your dinner to-day and not regret it to-morrow. WHAT WILL 999 YEARS MEAN TO THE HUMAN RACE The street railroad company in the Borough of Brooklyn has just executed some leases to endure 999 years. Leases of property have also been made for the same period, though, of course, a lease of 999 years will be about as binding 999 years from now as would a lease of the great pyramid executed the day after it was finished, if such a lease should be presented at present to the Egyptian Government. These preposterous leases are interesting because they bring vividly before the human mind the certainty of wonderful and splendid changes in human affairs. The street railroad leases are especially fascinating to the imaginative mind. They deal with present conditions and will seem inconceivably primitive hundreds of years before the leases will have ended. These leases deal with miserable little electric cars crawling slowly over the face of the earth, at either end an underpaid, overworked man, and in the middle a crowd of poor, dissatisfied, ill-housed human beings. Nine hundred and ninety-nine years from now the human race will not by any means have accomplished its destiny. It will still be struggling on toward the goal of real civilization.