through all the ages--What is the _summum bonum_ in life? and there have
been countless numbers who gladly would have given all they possessed to
have had the true and satisfactory answer. Can we then find this answer,
true and satisfactory to ourselves, surely the brief time spent together
must be counted as the most precious and valuable of life itself. _There
is an answer_: follow closely, and that our findings may be the more
conclusive, take issue with me at every step if you choose, but tell me
finally if it is not true and satisfactory.

There is one great, one simple principle, which, if firmly laid hold of,
and if made the great central principle in one's life, around which all
others properly arrange and subordinate themselves, will make that life
a grand success, truly great and genuinely happy, loved and blessed by
all in just the degree in which it is laid hold upon,--a principle
which, if universally made thus, would wonderfully change this old world
in which we live,--ay, that would transform it almost in a night, and it
is for its coming that the world has long been waiting; that in place of
the gloom and despair in almost countless numbers of lives would bring
light and hope and contentment, and no longer would it be said as so
truly to-day, that "man's inhumanity to man, makes countless thousands
mourn"; that would bring to the life of the fashionable society woman,
now spending her days and her nights in seeking for nothing but her own
pleasure, such a flood of true and genuine pleasure and happiness and
satisfaction as would make the poor, weak something she calls by this
name so pale before it, that she would quickly see that she hasn't known
what true pleasure is, and that what she has been mistaking for the
real, the genuine, is but as a baser metal compared to the purest of
gold, as a bit of cut glass compared to the rarest of diamonds, and that
would make this same woman who scarcely deigns to notice the poor woman
who washes her front steps, but who, were the facts known, may be