se may be purchased anywhere for 200
pounds per annum--but that our houses may be bigger and more gaudily
furnished than our neighbors'; that our horses and servants may be
more numerous; that we may dress our wives and daughters in absurd
but expensive clothes; and that we may give costly dinners of which we
ourselves individually do not eat a shilling's worth. And to do this we
aid the world's work with clear and busy brain, spreading commerce among
its peoples, carrying civilization to its remotest corners.

Do not let us abuse vanity, therefore. Rather let us use it. Honor
itself is but the highest form of vanity. The instinct is not confined
solely to Beau Brummels and Dolly Vardens. There is the vanity of the
peacock and the vanity of the eagle. Snobs are vain. But so, too, are
heroes. Come, oh! my young brother bucks, let us be vain together. Let
us join hands and help each other to increase our vanity. Let us be
vain, not of our trousers and hair, but of brave hearts and working
hands, of truth, of purity, of nobility. Let us be too vain to stoop
to aught that is mean or base, too vain for petty selfishness and
little-minded envy, too vain to say an unkind word or do an unkind act.
Let us be vain of being single-hearted, upright gentlemen in the
midst of a world of knaves. Let us pride ourselves upon thinking high
thoughts, achieving great deeds, living good lives.

ON GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.

Not exactly the sort of thing for an idle fellow to think about, is it?
But outsiders, you know, often see most of the game; and sitting in my
arbor by the wayside, smoking my hookah of contentment and eating
the sweet lotus-leaves of indolence, I can look out musingly upon the
whirling throng that rolls and tumbles past me on the great high-road of
life.

Never-ending is the wild procession. Day and night you can hear the
quick tramp of the myriad feet--some running, some walking, some
halting and lame; but all hastening, all eager in the feverish race, all
straining life and limb and heart and soul to reach the ever-receding
horizon of success.

Mark them as they surge along--men and women, old and young, gentle
and simple, fair and foul, rich and poor, merry and sad--all hurrying,
bustling, scrambling. The strong pushing aside the weak, the cunning
creeping past the foolish; those behind elbowing those before; those
in front kicking, as they run, at those behind. Look close and see the
flitting show. Here i