I am more and more convinced the longer I live that the very best
advice that was ever given from friend to friend is contained in those
four words: "Mind your own business." The following of it would save
many a heartache. Its observance would insure against every sort of
wrangling. When we mind our own business we are sure of success in
what we undertake, and may count upon a glorious immunity from failure.
When the husbandman harvests a crop by hanging over the fence and
watching his neighbor hoe weeds, it will be time for you and for me to
achieve renown in any undertaking in which we do not exclusively mind
our own business. If I had a family of young folks to give advice to,
my early, late and constant admonition would be always and everywhere
to "mind their own business." Thus should they woo harmony and peace,
and live to enjoy something like the completeness of life.




IX.

THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE ME MOST WEARY.

In the ups and downs and hithers and thithers of an eventful life shall
I tell you the people who have made me the most weary? It is not the
bad people, nor the foolish people; we can get along with all such
because of a streak of common humanity in us all, but I cannot survive
without extreme lassitude the decorous people; those who slip through
life without sound or sparkle, those who behave themselves upon every
occasion, and would pass through a dynamite explosion without rumpling
a hair; those who never have done anything out of the way and never
will, simply for the same reason that a fish cannot perspire--no blood