But all sad realities have their recompense in a happy mind. Give me the optimist and a famine and I'll show you a famine licked to a standstill. The combination of confident, hopeful ego and material misfortune never yet met, but that material misfortune took the count in the first round. The man who stands hugging misfortune in his chest has something coming to him. When it arrives it will land right square under that point where, if he were a woman of twenty years ago, he might have worn earrings. Take the other chap, however--the fellow who not only shakes hands with Trouble, but slaps it on the back, invites it to have a drink, sleeps with it, jollies it until it wrinkles up into a gorgeous grin six miles long; take that chap and put him in the middle of the Sahara Desert with nothing but a glad smile in his pocket, and he'll find a way to coax a mint julep out of the blooming sand! Do you know, the more I think about the fellow who starts out by howling that _things can't be done_, the more I'm convinced that the Creator got a lot of cracked forms into the outfit when Man was molded, and these little defects must really be charged up to accident. The Lord never intended any man made in His image to be afraid of anything that walks on hind legs or all fours, crawls or flies, or flops dismally over the Slough of Despond on a carrion-hunt. And just about the best way to mend this defect, I reckon, is to get married early and start right out buying a house and lot. If a fellow's an invertebrate he'll get past the first payment with a struggle. If he survives the second, it will put some starch into his hide. You are asking what all this has to do with That House I Bought. Why, bless your heart, Friend, it has all to do with it! The very first thing a man must do when he buys a house and lot is, get himself into the state of mind. Buying a house and lot is not so much a physical or financial transaction as a philosophical conclusion. You need the house and lot; you must argue yourself into a mental attitude toward that house and lot that simply knocks the props from under every obstacle. The man who is afraid to own his castle is a good citizen, perhaps, in every other respect. But the very best citizen is he who has the courage to own something and pay taxes on it, help support the community, and be useful to himself and to the world that holds him trustee of his possessions. SECOND PERIOD Heaven bless Murphy! When my wife was a little girl with braids down her back, Murphy used to see her in the excited crowd in front of the neighbor's door, as he toted a grand piano to the waiting van. Many a time Murphy has started to give that little girl a penny because she was so cute. Many a time he has reconsidered and kept the penny himself!