surrender of ourselves to the heaven-sent moment do we receive back all
it has to give us, and by the active receptivity of our natures attract
toward us other such moments, as it were, out of the sky. An ever-ready
romantic attitude toward life is the best preservative against the
_ennui_ of the years. Adventures, as the proverb says, are to the
adventurous, and, as the old song goes:

He either fears his fate too much
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all.

And the spirit of the times is happily growing more clement toward a
greater fulness and variety of life. The world is growing kinder toward
the fun and foolishness of existence, and the energetic pursuit of joy
is no longer frowned down by anaemic and hypocritical philosophies. The
old gods of energy and joy are coming to their own again, and the lives
of strong men and fair women are no longer ruled over by a hierarchy of
curates and maiden aunts; in fact, the maiden aunt has begun to find out
her mistake, and is out for her share of the fun and the foolishness
with the rest. Negative morality is fast becoming discredited, and many
an old "Thou shalt not" is coming to seem as absurd as the famous Blue
Laws of Connecticut. "Self-development, not self-sacrifice,"--a
favourite dictum of Grant Allen's,--is growing more and more to be the
formula of the modern world; and, if a certain amount of self-sacrifice
is of necessity included in a healthy self-development, the proportion
is being reduced to a rational limit. One form of self-sacrifice, at all
events, is no longer demanded of us--the wholesale sacrifice of our own
opinions. The possibility that there may be two opinions or a dozen or a
hundred on one matter, and that they may be all different, yet each one