the point of his story it is already broken off. Somebody
said of Mr. Gladstone's oratory that it was 'good, but copious.'
Canaries sing well, but the defect of their music is its abundance. I
prefer the hermit-thrush to the nightingale, not because the thrush's
notes are sweeter, but because he knows when to leave off, and let his
song vanish, at the exquisite moment, into the silence of mysterious
twilight."

"You seem to be proving," I said, "what most men will admit without
argument, that 'enough is as good as a feast.'"

"On the contrary," he replied, "I am arguing against that proverb.
Enough is not as good as a feast. It is far better. There is something
magical and satisfying in the art of leaving off. Good advice is
infinitely more potent when it is brief and earnest than when it
dribbles into vague exhortations. Many a man has been worried into vice
by well-meant but wearisome admonitions to be virtuous. A single word
of true friendly warning or encouragement is more eloquent than volumes
of nagging pertinacity, and may safely be spoken and left to do its
work. After all when we are anxious to help a friend into the right
path, there is not much more or better that we can say than what Sir
Walter Scott said, when he was a-dying, to his son-in-law Lockhart: 'Be
a good man, my dear, be a good man.' The life must say the rest."

"You are talking as seriously," said I, "as if you were a preacher and
we were in a church."

"Are we not?" said he, very quietly. "When we are thinking and talking
of the real meaning of life it seems to me that we are in the Temple.
Let me go on a moment longer with my talk. We often fancy, in this
world, that beautiful and pleasant things would satisfy us better if
they could be continued, without change, forever. We regret the ending
of a good 'day off.' We are sorry to be 'coming out of the woods'
instead of 'going in.' And that regret is perfectly natural and all
right. It is part of the condition on which we receive our happiness.
The mistake lies in wishing to escape from it by a petrification of our
joys. The stone forest in Arizona will never decay, but it is no place
for a man to set up his tents forever.

"The other day, a friend was admiring the old-fashioned house where I
live. ''Tis _a good camp_,' said I, 'plenty of wood and water, and I
hope it's on the right trail.'

"Many of our best friends have gone ahead of us on that trail. Why
should we hold back? The faire