s, but we shall not
line the family nest so softly that our children become powerless. We
shall not confine our charities to the specified channels, where our
names will be praised and our credit increased. We shall give and serve
in secret places with our hearts in our deeds. Then we may possess the
untroubled mind, a treasure too rich to be computed. We shall not have
it for the seeking; it may exist in the midst of what men may call
privations and sorrows; but it will exist in a very large sense and it
will be ours. The so-called hard-headed business man who never allows
himself to be taken advantage of, whose dealings are always strict and
uncompromising, is very apt to be a particularly miserable invalid when
he is ill. I cannot argue in favor of business laxity,--I know the
imperative need of exactness and finality,--but I do believe that if we
are to possess the untroubled mind we must make our lives larger than
the field of dollars and cents. The charity that develops in us will
make us truly generous and free from the reaction of hardness.

It is a great temptation to go on multiplying the rules of the game.
There are so many sensible and necessary pieces of advice which we all
need to have emphasized. That is the course we must try to avoid. The
child needs to be told, arbitrarily for a while, what is right, and what
is wrong, that he must do this, and he must not do that. The time comes,
however, when the growing instinct toward right living is the thing to
foster--not the details of life which will inevitably take care of
themselves if the underlying principle is made right. It must be the
ideal of moral teaching to make clear and pure the source of action.
Then the stream will be clear and pure. Such a stream will purify itself
and neutralize the dangerous inflow along its banks. It is true that
great harm may come from the polluted inflows, but they will be less and
less harmful as the increasing current from the good source flows down.

We shall have to look well to our habits lest serious ills befall, but
that must never be the main concern or we shall find ourselves living
very narrow and labored lives; we shall find that we are failing to
observe one of the most important rules of the game.

VI

THE NERVOUS TEMPERAMENT

Beyond the ugly actual, lo, on every side,
Imagination's limitless domain.
BROWNING.

He that too much refines his delicacy will always endang