essentials from non-essentials_. What are the essentials for life? For
a man, honesty, truth, earnestness, strength, health, ability to work,
and work to do. He may or may not be handsome; he may or may not have
wealth, position, fame, education; but to be a man among men, these
other things he must have. For a woman,--health, love, work, and such
virtues as both men and women need. She might enjoy friends, but they
are not essential as health or work; she would be a strange woman
if she did not prize beauty, but devoted love is worth far more than
beauty or all the conquests it brings. What is the essential for
a chair?--its capacity to be used to sit upon with comfort. A
house?--that it is adapted to the making of a home. You don't buy a
printing-press to curl your hair with but to print, and in accordance
with its printing power is it judged. A boat's usefulness is
determined by its worthiness in the water, to carry safely, rapidly,
largely as is demanded of it.

This is the judgement sanity demands of everything. What is
essential--What not? Is it essential to be a society leader, to
belong to every club, to hold office, to give as many dinners as one's
neighbors, to have a bigger house, furniture with brighter polish,
bigger carvings and more ugly designs than anyone else in town,
to have our names in the papers oftener than others, to have more
servants, a newer style automobile, put on more show, pomp, ceremony
and circumstance than our friends?

By no means! Oh for men and women who have the discerning power--the
sight for the essential things, the determination to have them and
let non-essentials go. They are the wise ones, the happy ones, the
free-from-worry ones.