n, though you lose your office or
your income, because the foundation on which your life rests is not your
table, your cellar, your horses, your goods and chattels, or your money.
In adversity you will not act like a nursling deprived of its bottle and
rattle. Stronger, better armed for the struggle, presenting, like those
with shaven heads, less advantage to the hands of your enemy, you will
also be of more profit to your neighbor. For you will not rouse his
jealousy, his base desires or his censure, by your luxury, your
prodigality, or the spectacle of a sycophant's life; and, less absorbed
in your own comfort, you will find the means of working for that of
others.

VII

SIMPLE PLEASURES

Do you find life amusing in these days? For my part, on the whole, it
seems rather depressing, and I fear that my opinion is not altogether
personal. As I observe the lives of my contemporaries, and listen to
their talk, I find myself unhappily confirmed in the opinion that they
do not get much pleasure out of things. And certainly it is not from
lack of trying; but it must be acknowledged that their success is
meagre. Where can the fault be?

Some accuse politics or business; others social problems or militarism.
We meet only an embarrassment of choice when we start to unstring the
chaplet of our carking cares. Suppose we set out in pursuit of pleasure.
There is too much pepper in our soup to make it palatable. Our arms are
filled with a multitude of embarrassments, any one of which would be
enough to spoil our temper. From morning till night, wherever we go, the
people we meet are hurried, worried, preoccupied. Some have spilt their
good blood in the miserable conflicts of petty politics: others are
disheartened by the meanness and jealousy they have encountered in the
world of literature or art. Commercial competition troubles the sleep of
not a few. The crowded curricula of study and the exigencies of their
opening careers, spoil life for young men. The working classes suffer
the consequences of a ceaseless industrial struggle. It is becoming
disagreeable to govern, because authority is diminishing; to teach,
because respect is vanishing. Wherever one turns there is matter for
discontent.

And yet history shows us certain epochs of upheaval which were as
lacking in idyllic tranquillity as is our own, but which the gravest
events did not prevent from being gay. It even seems as if the
seriousness of affairs, the unc