"Mental Efficiency And Other Hints to Men and Women"

This that you are living now is life itself -- it is much more life itself than that which you will be living twenty years hence. Grasp that truth. Dwell on it. Absorb it. Let it influence your conduct, to the end that neither the present nor the future be neglected.

You search for happiness? Happiness is chiefly a matter of temperament. It is exceedingly improbable that you will by struggling gain more happiness than you already possess. In fine, settle down at once into life. (Loud cheers.)

The cheers would of course be for the refreshments.

There is no doubt that the mass of the audience would consider that I had missed my vocation, and ought to have been a caterer instead of a preacher.

But, once started, I would not be discouraged. I would keep on, Sunday night after Sunday night. Our leading advertisers have richly proved that the public will believe anything if they are told of it often enough. I would practice iteration, always with refreshments.

In the result, it would dawn upon the corporate mind that there was some glimmering of sense in my doctrine, and people would at last begin to perceive the folly of neglecting to savour the present, the folly of assuming that the future can be essentially different from the present, the fatuity of dying before they have begun to live.

MARRIAGE

V

MARRIAGE

THE DUTY OF IT EVERY now and then it becomes necessary to deal faithfully with that immortal type of person, the praiser of the past at the expense of the present.

I will not quote Horace, as by all the traditions of letters I ought to do, because Horace, like the incurable trimmer that he was, " hedged" on this question; and I do not admire him much either. The praiser of the past has been very rife lately.

He has told us that pauperism and lunacy are mightily increasing, and though the exact opposite has been proved to be the case and he has apologized, he will have forgotten the correction in a few months, and will break out again into renewed lamentation.

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