and it would be a pity to disturb him." And so your contented party
is passed over and the discontented man gets his place.

If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble
with the rest; and if you can do with a little, ask for a great deal.
Because if you don't you won't get any. In this world it is necessary
to adopt the principle pursued by the plaintiff in an action for
damages, and to demand ten times more than you are ready to accept.
If you can feel satisfied with a hundred, begin by insisting on a
thousand; if you start by suggesting a hundred you will only get ten.

It was by not following this simple plan that poor Jean Jacques
Rousseau came to such grief. He fixed the summit of his earthly bliss
at living in an orchard with an amiable woman and a cow, and he never
attained even that. He did get as far as the orchard, but the woman
was not amiable, and she brought her mother with her, and there was no
cow. Now, if he had made up his mind for a large country estate, a
houseful of angels, and a cattle-show, he might have lived to possess
his kitchen garden and one head of live-stock, and even possibly have
come across that _rara-avis_--a really amiable woman.

What a terribly dull affair, too, life must be for contented people!
How heavy the time must hang upon their hands, and what on earth do
they occupy their thoughts with, supposing that they have any?
Reading the paper and smoking seems to be the intellectual food of the
majority of them, to which the more energetic add playing the flute
and talking about the affairs of the next-door neighbor.

They never knew the excitement of expectation nor the stern delight of
accomplished effort, such as stir the pulse of the man who has