serener, a more interesting, a happier outlook.

And so, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, striking a balance of
my advantages and disadvantages, I am inclined to think that the
good points predominate. Of course there still remains the
intensely human instinct, which survives all the lectures of
moralists, the desire to eat one's cake and also to have it. One
wants to keep the gains of middle life and not to part with the
glow of youth. "The tragedy of growing old," says a brilliant
writer, "is the remaining young;" that is to say, that the spirit
does not age as fast as the body. The sorrows of life lie in the
imagination, in the power to recall the good days that have been
and the old sprightly feelings; and in the power, too, to forecast
the slow overshadowing and decay of age. But Lord Beaconsfield once
said that the worst evil one has to endure is the anticipation of
the calamities that do not happen; and I am sure that the thing to
aim at is to live as far as possible in the day and for the day. I
do not mean in an epicurean fashion, by taking prodigally all the
pleasure that one can get, like a spendthrift of the happiness that
is meant to last a lifetime, but in the spirit of Newman's hymn--


"I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me."


Even now I find that I am gaining a certain power, instinctively, I
suppose, in making the most of the day and hour. In old days, if I
had a disagreeable engagement ahead of me, something to which I
looked forward with anxiety or dislike, I used to find that it