a hasty meal before some occasion that excites him. One must not
use life like the passover feast, to be eaten with loins girded and
staff in hand. It is there to be lived, and what we have to do is to
make the quality of it as fine as we can.

We must provide then, if we can, a certain setting for life, a
sufficiency of work and sustenance, and even leisure; and then we must
give that no further thought. How many men do I not know, whose
thought seems to be "when I have made enough money, when I have found
my place, when I have arranged the apparatus of life about me, then I
will live as I should wish to live." But the stream of desires
broadens and thickens, and the leisure hour never comes!

We must not thus deceive ourselves. What we have to do is to make
life, instantly and without delay, worthy to be lived. We must try to
enjoy all that we have to do, and take care that we do not do what we
do not enjoy, unless the hard task we set ourselves is sure to bring
us something that we really need. It is useless thus to elaborate the
cup of life, if we find when we have made it, that the wine which
should have filled it has long ago evaporated.

Can I say what I believe the wine of life to be? I believe that it is
a certain energy and richness of spirit, in which both mind and heart
find full expression. We ought to rise day by day with a certain zest,
a clear intention, a design to make the most out of every hour; not to
let the busy hours shoulder each other, tread on each other's heels,
but to force every action to give up its strength and sweetness. There
is work to be done, and there are empty hours to be filled as well.
It is happiest of all, for man and woman, if those hours can be
filled, not as a duty but as a pleasure, by pleasing those whom we
love and whose nearness is at once a delight. We ought to make time
for that most of all. And then there ought to be some occupation, not
enforced, to which we naturally wish to return. Exercise, gardening,
handicraft, writing, even if it be only leisurely letters, music,
reading--something to occupy the restless brain and hand; for there is
no doubt that both physically and mentally we are not fit to be
unoccupied.

But most of all, there must be something to quicken, enliven, practise
the soul. We must not force this upon ourselves, or it will be
fruitless and dreary; but neither must we let it lapse out of mere
indolence. We must follow some law of beauty, in what