=The Art of Settling Accounts.=--The teacher continued: "It really looks as though we could not go hence till everything is settled, great and small alike. Recently there died an early friend of mine, who, at an important juncture, had helped me with a hundred kronas.[1] I had at first regarded it as a loan. But he never dunned me, and during the forty years which have since elapsed he was gradually transformed in my memory into a benefactor, and all was well. When at last he died a millionaire, I did not wish to trouble his executors with the trifle, but sent a wreath to the funeral with a sigh of gratitude and many kindly thoughts. Was that the end? No! Shortly afterwards I felt a kind of inward admonition to resume relations with a bookbinder whom I had ceased to employ on account of his carelessness. He came and was glad to get work again; he was greatly pleased, and declared that I had appeared just in time to deliver him. When I understood his difficulties, for he had a family, I was willing to give him fifty kronas in advance, but as I had no change I gave him a hundred, though reluctantly. I saw how his back straightened itself, and his confidence in life reawoke. He went--and never returned. I was angry at first, because he had treated me like a fool, and I dunned him with letters. But then the memory of my departed friend recurred; various thoughts wove themselves together in my mind--the pleasure of calling him a scamp, the fifty-krona note which had turned into a hundred-krona note, the scamp's need, and the part I had played as deliverer. In my own mind I gave him a discharge, and became quite quiet." [Footnote 1: A krona = 1s. 3d.] =Growing Old Gracefully.=--The teacher continued: "When one becomes old, one wonders at first how men have, as it were, permission to do one an injustice. If one complains, one finds no sympathy. Even our friends take the part of those who injure us. But when we have discovered the secret of it, we take it all quietly. One is cheated in ordinary business, and says to oneself, 'This is in requital for that.' Our children prove ungrateful and difficult to manage, exactly like we were. Young people are insolent and pert towards us, and we see our former selves reflected in them. Servants do their work badly, and perpetrate petty thefts; we must put up with it, when we think of our own work scamped on various occasions. Friends are faithless, just as we have been ourselves. By practice one comes at last so far, that one asks for no more, demands no more, and is no longer angry. I then always think of David when Shimei cast stones at him and cursed him, and Abishai wanted to strike off the calumniator's head. David declined to take vengeance, saying, 'Let him curse, for the Lord hath bidden him.' When the same king, because of his sins, had to choose between famine, pestilence, or raids of the enemy, he prayed 'to fall into the hands of God, and not into the hands of man.'