the glory of the hills. These
books that good men write, telling us that what they call "success" in
life depends on our flinging aside our youth and wasting our manhood
in order that we may have the means when we are eighty of spending a
rollicking old age, annoy me. We save all our lives to invest in a
South Sea Bubble; and in skimping and scheming, we have grown mean,
and narrow, and hard. We will put off the gathering of the roses
till tomorrow, to-day it shall be all work, all bargain-driving, all
plotting. Lo, when to-morrow comes, the roses are blown; nor do we care
for roses, idle things of small marketable value; cabbages are more to
our fancy by the time to-morrow comes.

Life is a thing to be lived, not spent, to be faced, not ordered. Life
is not a game of chess, the victory to the most knowing; it is a game of
cards, one's hand by skill to be made the best of. Is it the wisest who
is always the most successful? I think not. The luckiest whist-player I
ever came across was a man who was never QUITE certain what were trumps,
and whose most frequent observation during the game was "I really
beg your pardon," addressed to his partner; a remark which generally
elicited the reply, "Oh, don't apologize. All's well that ends well."
The man I knew who made the most rapid fortune was a builder in the
outskirts of Birmingham, who could not write his name, and who, for
thirty years of his life, never went to bed sober. I do not say that
forgetfulness of trumps should be cultivated by whist-players. I think
my builder friend might have been even more successful had he learned
to write his name, and had he occasionally--not overdoing it--enjoyed a
sober evening. All I wish to impress is, that virtue is not the road to
success--of the kind we are dealing with. We must find other reasons for
being virtuous; maybe, there are some. The truth is, life is a gamble
pure and simple, and the rules we lay down for success are akin to the
infallible systems with which a certain class of idiot goes armed each
season to Monte Carlo. We can play the game with coolness and judgment,
decide when to plunge and when to stake small; but to think that wisdom
will decide it, is to imagine that we have discovered the law of chance.
Let us play the game of life as sportsmen, pocketing our winnings with
a smile, leaving our losings with a shrug. Perhaps that is why we have
been summoned to the board and the cards dealt round: that we may learn