ific, by seeing the universal in the particular.
(Like any artist or man who does things.)

The value of being affirmative and the value of being concrete have
already been touched upon. There remains the value of being specific.

Possibly, in this present happy hour, when our country has grown
suddenly sensible and has become practical enough to pick out at last,
once more, a President with a real serious working sense of humour, even
a sense of humour about himself, it may not be considered disrespectful
if I continue a little longer dropping in on the Government, and saying
what I have to say in a few plain and homely words.

The trouble with most people in being economical with their money is,
that when they spend it, they spend it on something in particular, and
when they save it, they try to save it in a kind of general way. The
same principle applies to doing right. It is because when people do
right, they do it in a kind of general pleasant, abstract way, and when
they do wrong they always do something in particular, that they are so
Wicked.

A man will do almost anything to save his life at a particular place and
at a particular time, say at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, if he is
drowning, but if he has a year to save it in, a year of controlling his
appetites, of daily, detailed mastering of his spirit, of not taking a
piece of mince pie, of stopping his work in time and of going to bed
early, he will die.

It is easier when one is going under water for the third time and sees a
rope, to stretch just one inch more and grasp the rope, reach up to
forty more years of one's life, all concentrated for one on the tip of a
rope, than it is to spread out saving one's life over a whole year, 365
breakfasts, 365 luncheons, 365 dinners, 33,365 moments of anger, of
reckless worry, of remorse, of self-pity, 40,000 of despair and round up
with a swing at the end of one's year at the tiptop of one's being, as
if it had only taken five minutes. And yet it is only an act of the
creative imagination of seeing the whole, of having a happy, daily,
detailed spectacle of the end in view, that is, of the part in its
setting of the whole--going without a piece of mince pie. If one could
only make one's self see the piece of mince pie as it is, it would not
be difficult. If one could see it on the plate there and see the not
taking it as a little wedge-shaped rivet, a little triangular link of
coupling in the chain that keeps o