in a circle the patient
toiler never dreams of entering. Surely he is a stern moralist who would
deny this satisfaction to the breadwinner of a family.

There are doubtless many higher motives in life, more elevated goals
toward which struggling humanity should strive. If you examine the
average mind, however, you will be pretty sure to find that success is
the touchstone by which we judge our fellows and what, in our hearts, we
admire the most. That is not to be wondered at, either, for we have done
all we can to implant it there. From a child's first opening thought, it
is impressed upon him that the great object of existence is to succeed.
Did a parent ever tell a child to try and stand last in his class? And
yet humility is a virtue we admire in the abstract. Are any of us
willing to step aside and see our inferiors pass us in the race? That is
too much to ask of poor humanity. Were other and higher standards to be
accepted, the structure of civilization as it exists to-day would crumble
away and the great machine run down.

In returning to my correspondent and her perfectly legitimate desire to
know the road to success, we must realize that to a large part of the
world social success is the only kind they understand. The great
inventors and benefactors of mankind live too far away on a plane by
themselves to be the object of jealousy to any but a very small circle;
on the other hand, in these days of equality, especially in this country
where caste has never existed, the social world seems to hold out
alluring and tangible gifts to him who can enter its enchanted portals.
Even politics, to judge by the actions of some of our legislators, of
late, would seem to be only a stepping-stone to its door!

"But my question," I hear my fair interlocutor saying. "You are not
answering it!"

All in good time, my dear. I am just about to do so. Did you ever hear
of Darwin and his theory of "selection?" It would be a slight to your
intelligence not to take it for granted that you had. Well, my
observations in the world lead me to believe that we follow there
unconsciously, the same rules that guide the wild beasts in the forest.
Certain individuals are endowed by nature with temperaments which make
them take naturally to a social life and shine there. In it they find
their natural element. They develop freely just where others shrivel up
and disappear. There is continually going on unseen a "natural
selecti