individuals with whom business is a passion, but just an average plain
man, he is labouring daily against the grain, stultifying daily one
part of his nature, on the supposition that later he will be
recompensed. In other words, he is preparing to live, so that at a
distant date he may be in a condition to live. He has not effected a
compromise between the present and the future. His own
complaint--"What pleasure do I get out of life?"--proves that he is
completely sacrificing the present to the future. And how elusive is
the future! Like the horizon, it always recedes. If, when he was
thirty, some one had foretold that at forty-five, with a sympathetic
wife and family and an increasing income, he would be as far off
happiness as ever, he would have smiled at the prophecy.

The consulting friend, somewhat nettled by the plain man's bluntness,
might retort:

"I may or may not have been a fool. That's not the point. The point is
that I am definitely in the enterprise, and can't get out of it. And
there's nothing to be done."

Whereupon the plain man, in an encouraging, enheartening, reasonable
tone, would respond:

"Don't say that, my dear chap. Of course, if you're in it, you're in
it. But give me all the details. Let's examine the thing. And allow me
to tell you that no case that looks bad is as bad as it looks."

It is precisely in this spirit that the plain man should approach his
own case. He should say to himself in that reasonable tone which he
employs to his friend, and which is so impressive: "Let me examine the