Alongside of reading and reflection we must place writing. Many will need no explanation why this should be classed among the pleasures of life; while to others it is always a distasteful drudgery. They escape it whenever possible, and reduce it to its lowest terms, which means letter-writing――and in their case always the writing of very middling letters. A letter, indeed, is a great tell-tale, and tells the more the less it says. A score of years in editorial work, during which the competency of numerous writers had to be gauged by some quick standard, taught me that the letter of transmittal is generally enough to decide on the merits of the manuscript offered. To him who can appreciate its revelations there is no more infallible test of general culture than an ordinary letter. Correspondence by some is classed among the lost arts. As an art, we can let it go; but as one of the most agreeable of pleasures, it will ever remain. Nature, not art, is what gives it its charm. The free expressions of personal feelings, thoughts, and observations, the intimacy and confidence which we can never find in books or magazines, the household words and pet phrases which grow up between correspondents, the tacit assumptions of common tastes and knowledge, these are what endow correspondence with its boundless charms for those who cultivate it. Some writers have extolled the pleasure to be derived from keeping a diary. They claim it gives one much delight to turn back to an accurate record of what he did or heard or saw at a given period of his past life. They add that it is also a judicious habit for our own well-being, teaching us what errors we have made, what false opinions harbored, what aims pursued fruitlessly, and the like. I believe what these writers say, and commend their advice to those for whom it is suited. As for myself, I never could follow it. The diaries which I have occasionally begun, I have usually ended by throwing into the fire. It seems to me a man must either progress very little, be supernaturally wise to begin with, or have incredible self-complacency, to read with satisfaction a diary of his own five years old which contains anything but the most naked facts. Amiel’s diary is one of the most attractive published of recent years; but it certainly could have been no pleasure to his sensitive mind to have renewed its sorrows by perusing its morbid reflections. I have left to the last the consideration of the highest of all intellectual joys,――the Pursuit of Truth. This should be the aim of every thought, and the sole, conscious occupation of our understandings. As our senses are satisfied only with pleasure, in like manner our reason finds no rest until it attains to what is true. That man is useless on the face of the earth, and wastes his life, who devotes his time to anything else than the pursuit of happiness or the search for truth.