Some one has said that ambition is the main-spring of life. I do not know, yet I have had ambition--of a certain kind. Mine has been to learn, to know, to acquire wisdom that should raise me out of the dead level of mediocrity. But Ambition is the twin sister of Discontent, and Discontent is the mother of Melancholy and Despair. Work as I might--and I have never been a drone--there has always been some one just ahead of me whose results were so much more commendable than my own that,--well, one might as well work on, even though he never accomplishes anything worth while. Certain it is that the world has been no better for anything I ever did. And still I work. I often wonder if the fellow ahead of me in life’s battle does not feel the same way;--there’s always another just ahead of him. There can be no satisfaction in work well done when another goal is looming up just beyond the one we have reached. I saw a herd of cattle the other day, lying beneath a spreading oak, placidly chewing their cuds, and as I looked at them I fancied they gazed at me somewhat pityingly. “Ah,” I thought, “here is contentment indeed.” I really envied them--until I noticed the flies that tormented their glossy hides. One might as well be tormented by ambitions as by flies and gnats. Possibly Nature is jealous of her children, and will permit none of them to experience the joy of mere living unannoyed. * * * * * A friend of mine once said to me, “How very odd, that you should have taken up the science of chemistry and made a recluse of yourself, delving and diving into secrets of nature which, as you have never made any practical use of them, might as well have remained mysteries.” Here was another who did not understand--another who, like all the rest of those who called themselves and whom I called my friends, could not sympathize with me in my devotion to study, because there were no flesh pots in sight to serve as a motive for the work. To such sordid ones I could not well lay bare the bitter humiliations with which my all too evident failure to attain practical results have afflicted me. I could not lay bare the secret aspirations that impelled me to seek for things which would have given me a place as a benefactor of my kind and enrolled me among the immortals. And suppose I had ever confessed that the mystery of ancient alchemy so impressed me that I must needs grasp at its only modern representative, chemistry--would not my friends have laughed at me? * * * * *