d the
Roman soldier pacing to and fro in the porticoes of the Palatine, had
much the same thoughts. Whosoever speaks to man on the art of becoming
happy is secure of a hearing; even though he be the vilest of quacks he
will have his following, even though he were the worst of scoundrels
some will take him for a prophet. In short, we are all the dupes of
hope, and it needs some experience to assure us that our only real hope
is in ourselves. In our own hearts lies the Eldorado which we scour
the world to find; could we but fulfil our best selves we should ask no
other happiness.

The question that soon comes to obtrude itself upon the mind of a
thoughtful man in a great city, is this old persistent question of
whether his method of life is such as to answer to the ideal of
fulfilling his best self? It seemed to me that the inhabitants of
cities were too busy getting a living to have time to live.

Let us take the life of the average business man by way of example.
Such a man will rise early, sleep late, and eat the bread of
carefulness, if he means to succeed. He will probably live--or be said
to live--in some suburb more or less remote from the roaring centre of
affairs. The first light of the winter dawn will see him alert;
breakfast is a hurried passover performance; a certain train must be
caught at all hazard to digestion, and the most leisured moments of the
day will be those he passes in the railway carriage. Once arrived at
his office he must plunge into the vortex of business; do battle with a
thousand rivalries and competitions; day after day must labour in the
same wearisome pursuits, content, perhaps, if at the end of the year he
shall have escaped as by a miracle commercial shipwreck. He will come
back to his residence, night after night, a tired man; not pleasantly
wearied with pursuits which have exercised his complete powers, but
tired to the point of dejection by the narrowness and monotony of his
pursuits. I say he returns to his residence; I scorn to say his home,
for the house he rents is merely the barrack where he sleeps. Of the
life that goes on within this house, which is nominally his, he knows
nothing. In its daily ordering, or even in its external features, he
has no part. He has chosen no item of its furniture; he has had no
hand in its decoration; he has but paid the tradesmen's bills. His
children scarcely know him; they are asleep when he goes off in the
morning, and asleep w