Someone remarks somewhere that "a man works one-half of his life in order that he may rest the other." I wonder if those who are successful ever appreciate their rest when they get it! I wonder if it comes up to their expectations! if the goal toward which they have been looking almost since they began to exist is worth the trouble and energy spent on it! Ah, I am afraid they very rarely find it so! They have become so immured in their busy lives, that it is difficult to grow accustomed to any other. Unless one is brought up to it, the _Dolce far niente_ is not an existence we enjoy. We are made the wrong way about somehow. We ought to be born old and gradually grow younger as the years roll on. Still, I daresay there would be something to complain of even then, and perhaps it would not be very dignified to go off the stage as a baby! To go to the opposite extreme, there are the fashionable water-places; little Londons, or rather little imitations of London; for beside that great capital itself they are like pieces of glass to a diamond. And yet fashion and folly are all here, sunning themselves by the sea instead of in the park; driving up and down in the same way, in equally charming toilets. But still there seems to be something lacking, something wanting. They are too small, these towns; you so soon know everyone by sight, and grow tired both of them and their costumes. There is a good deal of stir and life about all the same. There are bands, niggers, clairvoyantes, fire-eaters; plenty indeed for you to see and hear when you are weary of strutting up and down and nodding to your friends. And yet, in spite of all, you grow tired of "London by the sea," after a few weeks, even in that dead season of the year--November. Have you ever visited one of these places in the midst of a tennis week, when the grand tournaments take place? Lawn tennis is a delightful recreation for a time, provided you have a good partner and good antagonists, and you are playing under a moderately warm sun; but when you hear, see, and play nothing else for a week, when the conversation is "tennis," when no one appears without a racquet in his hand, when all you have to listen to are criticisms on the courts and balls, grumblings against the handicapping, imprecations on "bisques"--well, you begin to hate the very name, and wish you could injure the man who invented it. You grow tired of watching the same thing day after day, the men who spend their lives in tossing balls across to each other, the sea of faces; turning backwards and forwards at each stroke with the regulation of a pendulum.