augmented as age makes itself felt--all who toil feel at times these
depressing limitations.

Little wonder that lives snatch at every fleeting, alluring promise of
relief, through amusement, through anything that offers change and
excitement. Little wonder that, robbed of opportunity for vision, they
foment blind discontent, so that we all feel there is a mighty
substratum of wretchedness and of menace lying under our social order.

Yet there are few lives, perhaps no worthy ones, without tasks that
often seem monotonous and become matters of dull grinding that bring
weariness and longing for relief. All worth while work involves much
tediousness, painstaking exertion. All great things stand for so much
life poured out, and life is never poured out without pain and loss.

The stern Puritan was doubtless wrong when he saw nothing in life but
repression and stern duty, but he was nearer right than he who looks
only for frivolity and amusement. Life is too large a business to be
always light and trivial. Yet we must not allow its high purposes to
be thwarted by robbing ourselves and our fellows of all joy and
brightness and converting life into dull, mechanical servitude.

How may we find that proportion of toil and relief, that happy mixture
of duty and delight that shall make life not only endurable but also
useful, fruitful, and enjoyable? For it is man's duty to be happy;
otherwise he can never be useful in any high or valuable sense.

It would be easy to try to give comfort by the philosophy which sees
the fine fruitage that is coming from to-day's stern discipline. That
fair fruitage is coming, but the trouble is it is too far off to give