through a mist of tears. Every great life-work is an agony. Behind every song there lurks a sigh. There's an element of sadness in humor itself. The Virgin Mother is known as Our Lady of Pain. The cult of Christ is hallowed by the blood of self-sacrifice and known as the Religion of Sorrow. The first breath of life and the last gasp are drawn in suffering; and between the cradle and the grave there lies a monster-haunted Sahara. Yet men choose the ignis-fatuus called Happiness, and mourn that they cannot cover it with a No. 6 hat. They should pray the gods to transform them into contented goats and turn them out to grass. People who cannot find happiness here begin to look for it in heaven. Eternal beatitude is another ridiculous rainbow. Nirvana is nonsense. If there be a life beyond the grave, it means continued endeavor, and there can be no endeavor unless there's dissatisfaction. The creature cannot rise superior to its creator--and the universe is the result of God's unrest. Had he been perfectly content he would not have made me. Carlyle--not Mugwump Carlisle of Kentucky, but Thos. Carlyle of Great Britain-the lord of modern literature-- says the hell most dreaded by the English is the hell of not making money. We have imported this English Gehenna, duty free, despite Mr. Dingley, and now the man who doesn't succeed in accumulating dollars is socially damned. How many of this generation can understand the remark of Agassiz that he had no time to make money?--can realize that such occupation is not the sole end of man?-- that time expended in the accumulation of wealth beyond the satisfaction of simple wants is worse than wasted? It is so because from our numbered days we have stolen years that should have been devoted to soul-development, filled with the sweets of knowledge; hallowed by the perfume of love, made gracious by noble deeds--because we have blasted life's fair fruitage with the primeval eldest curse. Omar strikes one true chord when he doth sing: "A book of verses, underneath the bough, A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou Singing beside me in the wilderness-- O wilderness were Paradise enow!" . . .