gainers; we shall at once get more pleasure out of them than we did
before, and we shall do everything in our power to prevent the loss
of them; for instance, by not risking our property, or angering our
friends, or exposing our wives to temptation, or being careless about
our children's health, and so on.

We often try to banish the gloom and despondency of the present by
speculating upon our chances of success in the future; a process which
leads us to invent a great many chimerical hopes. Every one of them
contains the germ of illusion, and disappointment is inevitable when
our hopes are shattered by the hard facts of life.

It is less hurtful to take the chances of misfortune as a theme for
speculation; because, in doing so, we provide ourselves at once with
measures of precaution against it, and a pleasant surprise when it
fails to make its appearance. Is it not a fact that we always feel a
marked improvement in our spirits when we begin to get over a period
of anxiety? I may go further and say that there is some use in
occasionally looking upon terrible misfortunes--such as might happen
to us--as though they had actually happened, for then the trivial
reverses which subsequently come in reality, are much easier to
bear. It is a source of consolation to look back upon those great
misfortunes which never happened. But in following out this rule,
care must be taken not to neglect what I have said in the preceding
section.

SECTION 15. The things which engage our attention--whether they are
matters of business or ordinary events--are of such diverse kinds,
that, if taken quite separately and in no fixed order or relation,
they present a medley of the most glaring contrasts, with nothing in