become better. It is a most promising experiment. It furnishes an
abundance of the raw materials of righteousness.

Nor does he flatter himself that the task of betterment is an easy one,
or that the end is in sight. It is not a world where wishes, even good
wishes, are fulfilled without effort. There are inexorable laws not of
our making. The whims of good people are not respected.

"For Destiny never swerves
Nor yields to man the helm."

The struggle is stem and unrelenting. It taxes all our energies. And
yet it is exhilarating. There is a moral quick-wittedness which sees
the smile behind the threatening mask of Fate. Destiny is after all a
good comrade for the brave and the self-reliant.

"He forbids to despair,
His cheeks mantle with mirth,
And the unimagined good of man
Is yeaning at the birth."

The riddle of existence is seen not from the Old World point of view,
but from that of the new. It is of the nature of a surprise. The Sphinx
of Emerson is not carved in stone. It is not silent and motionless,
waiting for answers that do not come.

It is the American Sphinx leading in a game of hide-and-seek. The
mystery of existence baffles us, not because there is no answer, but
because there are so many. They are infinite in number, and all of them
are true. They wait for the mind large enough to harbor them in all