The Epicurean will not lose an hour of needed sleep nor tolerate such an abomination as an alarm clock in his house. If he permits himself to be awakened in the morning, it will be as Thomas B. Reed used to when, as a student at Bowdoin College, he was obliged to be in chapel at six o'clock. He had the janitor call him at half-past four, in order that he might have the luxury of feeling that he had another whole hour in which to sleep, and then call him again at the last moment which would permit him to dress in time for chapel. These things, however, we may for the most part take for granted. We do not require a philosopher to regulate our diet for us; or to put us to bed at night, and tuck us in, and hear us say our prayers. Those elementary lessons were doubtless needed in the childhood of the race. The selection from Spencer on work and play strikes closer to the problem of the modern man; and it is at this point that we all sorely need to go to school to Epicurus. Perhaps we are inclined to look down on Epicurus's ideal as a low one. Well, if it is a low ideal, it is all the more disgraceful to fall below it. And most of us do fall below it every day of our tense and restless lives. Let us test ourselves by this ideal, and answer honestly the questions it puts to us. How many of us are slaving all day and late into the night to add artificial superfluities to the simple necessities? How many of us know how to stop working when it begins to encroach upon our health; and to cut off anxiety and worry altogether? How many of us measure the amount and intensity of our toil by our physical strength; doing what we can do healthfully, cheerfully, joyously, and leaving the rest undone, instead of straining up to the highest notch of nervous tension during early manhood and womanhood, only to break down when the life forces begin to turn against us? Every man in any position of responsibility and influence has opportunity to do the work of twenty men. How many of us in such circumstances choose the one thing we can do best, and leave the other nineteen for other people to do, or else to remain undone? How many of us have ever seriously stopped to think where the limit of healthful effort and endurance lies, unless insomnia or dyspepsia or nervous prostration have laid their heavy hands upon us and compelled us to pause? Every breakdown from avoidable causes, every stroke of work we do after the border-land of exhaustion and nervous strain is crossed, is a crime against the teaching of Epicurus; and these diseases that beset our modern business life are the penalties with which nature visits us in vindication of the wisdom of his teachings. Every day that we work beyond our strength; every hour that we spend in consequent exhaustion and depression; every minute that we give over to worrying about things beyond our immediate control, we either fall below, or else rise above, Epicurus's level.