ve for others,
yes! but don't live entirely for them. No. For if you live altogether
for someone, it stands to reason that they cannot well live for
you--or, if they can, then they don't trouble, since you are such a
certain asset in their lives. So they will begin to live for someone
else. For this living for people is part of the nature of all hearts
which are not the hearts of "turnips." And then, what becomes of you?
No, the wise man and woman keep a little for themselves, and that
"little" is barred to permanent visitors. You may allow certain people
to live therein for a while, but, as you value your own joy and
happiness, your own independence and peace, do not deliver up to them
the key. Keep that for yourself, so that, when the loneliness of life
comes to you, as come it will--that is part of the tragedy of human
life--you may not be utterly desolate, but possess some little ray of
hope and delight and joy to illumine the shadows of loneliness when
they fall across your path. And, for what they are worth to me for
consolation, I thank Heaven now for the long years which I spent
practically alone in the world, so far as congenial companionship went.
Solitude drove me back upon myself, and since all of us must have some
joy, natural or merely manufactured, in order to go on living, it
forced me to cultivate other interests, which, perhaps, had I been
happy, I should have neglected for brighter but more ephemeral joys.
So I am not frightened of my own society, and that, though a rather
dreary achievement, is by no means to be despised. It enables me to
wander about alone and yet be happy; it permits me to travel with no
one but my own company and the chance acquaintances I pick up _en
route_, and yet not be entirely depressed. It helped me to achieve
that philosophy which says: "If I may not have the ideal companion,
then let me walk with no one but myself"--and that is the philosophy of
a man who can never really feel lonely for a long time, even though he
may be quite alone.

_The Enthralling Out-of-reach_

Everybody _knows_ that they could improve human nature. I don't mean,
of course, that they could necessarily improve their own, nor that of
the lady who lives next door, nor that of Mr. Lloyd George, nor of Miss
Marie Lloyd, nor even of Lenin and Trotsky; but human nature as it is
found in all of us and as it prevents heaven on this earth lasting much
longer than five and twenty minutes! I