ar, envy, hate, remorse, anger, and the like, there is only one
right way to treat it. Pull it up like a weed; drop it on the rubbish
heap as if it were a stinging nettle; and let some harmonious thought
grow in its place. There is no more reckless consumer of all kinds of
exuberance than the discordant thought, and weeding it out saves such
an amazing quantity of _eau de vie_ wherewith to water the garden of
joy, that every man may thus be his own Burbank and accomplish marvels
of mental horticulture.

When you have won physical and mental exuberance, you will have
pleased your Auto-Comrade to such an extent that he will most likely
startle and delight you with a birthday present as the reward of
virtue. Some fine morning you will climb out of the right side of your
bed and come whistling down to breakfast and find by your plate a neat
packet of spiritual exuberance with his best wishes. Such a gift is
what the true artist enjoys when inspiration comes too fast and full
for a dozen pens or brushes to record. Jeanne d'Arc knew it when the
mysterious voices spoke to her; and St. John on Patmos; and every true
lover at certain moments; and each one of us who has ever flung wide
the gates of prayer and felt the infinite come flooding in as the
clean vigor of the tide swirls up through a sour, stagnant marsh; or
who at some supreme instant has felt enfolding him, like the
everlasting arms, a sure conviction of immortality.

Now for purposes of convenience we may speak of these three kinds of
exuberance as we would speak of different individuals. But in reality
they hardly ever exist alone. The physical variety is almost sure to
induce the mental and spiritual varieties and to project itself into
them. The mental kind looks before and after and warms body and soul
with its radiant smile. And even when we are in the throes of a purely
spiritual love or religious ecstasy, we have a feeling--though
perhaps it is illusory--that the flesh and the intellect are more
potent than we knew.

These, then, constitute the first three parts of the joy-digesting
apparatus. I think there is no need of dwelling on their efficacy in
helping one to enjoy achievement. Let us pass, therefore, to the
fourth and last part, which is self-restraint.

Perhaps the worst charge usually made against achievement is its
sameness, its dry monotony. On the way to it (the writers say) you are
constantly falling in with something new. But, once there, you