engross his thoughts. The true duties lie all upon the further side, and
must be attended to with a whole mind so soon as this preliminary
clearing of the decks has been effected. In order that he may be kind
and honest, it may be needful he should become a total abstainer; let
him become so then, and the next day let him forget the circumstance.
Trying to be kind and honest will require all his thoughts; a mortified
appetite is never a wise companion; in so far as he has had to mortify
an appetite, he will still be the worse man; and of such an one a great
deal of cheerfulness will be required in judging life, and a great deal
of humility in judging others.

It may be argued again that dissatisfaction with our life's endeavour
springs in some degree from dulness. We require higher tasks, because we
do not recognise the height of those we have. Trying to be kind and
honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemen
of our heroic mould; we had rather set ourselves to something bold,
arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress a
heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us,
which is to co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic
fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. There is no
cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled.

To be honest, to be kind--to earn a little and to spend a little less,
to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce
when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few
friends, but these without capitulation--above all, on the same grim
condition, to keep friends with himself--here is a task for all that a
man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious soul who would
ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who should look in such an enterprise
to be successful. There is indeed one element in human destiny that not
blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are intended to do, we
are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. It is so in
every art and study; it is so above all in the continent art of living
well. Here is a pleasant thought for the year's end or for the end of
life: Only self-deception will be satisfied, and there need be no
despair for the despairer.

II

But Christmas is not only the mile-mark of another year, moving us to
thoughts of self-examination: it is a season, from all its association