But it is possible, also, to lose the pleasures of friendship by allowing them to interfere with the machinery of daily life, and to come to a time when we have to sacrifice either social intercourse or business. Perhaps there is no means of entertaining which yields so much satisfaction with so little interference with that regularity in the daily program that is necessary for health and work as the afternoon tea. By this I mean, not the large reception which sometimes goes by the name of “tea,” but the little, informal tea drinking. The food that is served at such a time is not a means of life, but simply an addition to the dietary made for the sake of refreshment and pleasure. It is not, therefore, necessary to serve enough to sustain life from one meal to another. Moreover, it is possible to buy ready prepared all the materials--the biscuits, the wafers, and the candies--and to have them always on hand. If busy people have it understood that they drink tea at a certain hour when at home, and that their friends are always welcome to drink with them, they are likely to get visits with real friends which they could never get in any other way. But there is another occupation which may be an end in life without at the same time being a means. That is meditation on life and its meaning. To stand off from life and to view its follies, its foibles, and its inconsistencies, its pathos, its humor, to see all sides of it--this is one of the joys of mere living. Perhaps the best time for this is during a walk in town, and it is the chance to see life that can change a constitutional upon city pavements from a means to life to a part of life itself. He who is too busy with the machinery of life to get a chance to look upon life itself, as upon a drama, loses half the joy of living. To stretch the muscles, to breathe deeply, to feel the blood circulate rapidly, to feel the wind blowing in one’s face, to love and to express love, to stand off and see life from afar--these are joys for which it is worth while to simplify the machinery of life. MORE BEAUTY FOR ALL We all seek beauty. We want the beauty of form and of color which appeals to the eye, but we want also the greater beauties which, because they belong, not to material, but to immaterial things, make their appeal to the conscience and to the intellect, rather than to the senses. We want the beauties of lives in harmony with their physical and their social environment. Esthetics is the philosophy of beauty. A narrow conception of its province makes it concern itself exclusively with the beauties of material things. A broader and better conception brings into its province all beauties, including those of life and of character and of harmonious human relations.