For such a person as I happened to be, that, as I then believed and still believe, was the wisest resolution I could make. The habit of immediate activity, physically or mentally violent, had, from the days when butterflies, plants, athletics, friendship, _Saturday Magazines_ were all put under contribution to feed the raging energies of life, become an instinct. If there was a kick left in my wholly boyish nature, it had become a habit to kick, and not to save the energy for any future emergency: if there was a minute to spare, somehow to use or enjoy it. To what use that minute and that kick were devoted, so I now see, did not particularly matter: the point was to kick for just that minute. No doubt there are other and admirable uses to which energy may be put; some make reservoirs, into which they pour and store their vital force, and while it increases, screw down their sluice, and let the gathered waters rest and reflect. Such as these probably achieve the most abiding results, for when they choose to raise their sluice, they can, by the judicious use of winch and shutter, continue to irrigate the field which they have determined to make fruitful, for a period that they can certainly estimate. They burn a steady unwavering candle which will always illuminate a fixed area, and from the areas which do not concern them they hide their ray and thus economize their wax and their wick. But how surely are there others who from their very nature are unable to construct their reservoirs or burn this one decorous candle. Whatever head of water there is, it must be instantly dispersed, whatever candle there is, it must be lit at both ends, and if that is not enough, it must be broken in half, and its new ends of wicks kindled and used for the exploration of some trumpery adventure: “trumpery,” that is to say, in the vocabulary of the wise and prudent, but how colossal in the sight of the wild-eyed adventurer. And just here, just where a moral lesson should be drawn showing the early decay and the untimely end of these spendthrifts of energy, the whole tendency of Nature lies in precisely the opposite direction to that in which natural and moral economy ought to tend, for it is the careful who grow early old, and the careful investor of energy who declares bankruptcy, and retires in middle life to the club windows, where he shows a bald head to St. James’s Street, and a sour visage to the waiters. Somehow so it most inexorably seems, those who spend, have; those who save, lack. Not that the spender could, by the laws and instincts of his nature, have done otherwise than court bankruptcy: not that the investor could have done otherwise than court affluence. But the one careful candle, as a matter of experience, gets blown out, and the irrelevant candle-ends continue to flare....