poorest use of time is to kill it. This is the weakest and most cowardly
form of suicide. Moreover it is never quite successful. That "time which
crawleth like a monstrous snake, wounded and slow and very venomous" is
sure to take its own revenges.

It is therefore good to look on the cheerful side of life. A touch of
humor is necessary to the salvation of the serious man. It is a gift of
the men of America to see droll things and to express them in droll
fashion. To see the funny side of one's own accomplishments is the
highest achievement of the American philosopher and there is hope for
the land in which the greatest wits have been the most earnest of moral
teachers. Who was more earnest than Oliver Wendell Holmes, who more
genuine than Mark Twain? Without the saving grace of humor our Puritan
conscience which we all possess would lead us again into all
extravagance, witch-burnings, Quaker-stoning, heresy trials, and
intolerance of politics and religion. From all these we are saved by our
feeling for the incongruous. A touch of humor recalls us to our senses.
It "makes the whole world kin."

In the love of nature is another source of saving grace. Science is
power. In the stores of human experience lies the key to action, and
modern civilization is built on Science. The love of nature is akin to
Science but different. Contact with outdoor things is direct experience.
It is not stored, not co-ordinated, not always convertible into power,
but real, nevertheless, and our own. The song of birds, the swarming of
bees, the meadow carpeted with flowers, the first pink harbingers of the
early spring, the rush of the waterfall, the piling up of the rocks, the
trail through the forest, the sweep of the surf, the darting of the
fishes, the drifting of the snow, the white crystals of the frost, the
shrieking of the ice, the boom of the bittern, the barking of the sea