You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull-eyed. You will
suffer horribly.

"Realize your youth while you have it. Don't squander the gold of
your days, listening to the tedious, trying to improve the hopeless
failure, or giving away your life to the ignorant, the common, and
the vulgar, which are the aims, the false ideals, of our age. Live!
Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon
you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.

"A new hedonism,--that is what our century wants. You might be its
visible symbol. With your personality there is nothing you could not
do. The world belongs to you for a season.

"The moment I met you I saw that you were quite unconscious of what
you really are, what you really might be. There was so much about
you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about
yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted. For
there is such a little time that your youth will last,--such a little
time.

"The common hill-flowers wither, but they blossom again. The
laburnum will be as golden next June as it is now. In a month there
will be purple stars on the clematis, and year after year the green
night of its leaves will have its purple stars. But we never get
back our youth. The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty, becomes
sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into
hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we
were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we did not
dare to yield to. Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the