will not budge. These writers would thus quite
sufficiently have played dentist to Disappointment and extracted his
venomous fangs for us in advance. What the gentlemen really should have
done was to perform the dentistry first, reminding us once again that a
part of attainment is illusory and consists of such stuff as
dreams--good and bad--are made of. Then, on the other hand, they should
have demonstrated attainment's good points, finally leading up to its
supreme advantage. This advantage is--its strategic position.

Arriving beats hoping to arrive, in this: that while the hoper is so
keenly hopeful that he has little attention to spare for anything
besides the future, the arriver may take a broader, more leisurely
survey of things. The hoper's eyes are glued to the distant peak. The
attainer of that peak may recover his breath and enjoy a complete
panorama of his present achievement and may amuse himself moreover by
re-climbing the mountain in retrospect. He has also yonder farther and
loftier peak in his eye, which he may now look forward to attacking
the week after next; for this little preliminary jaunt is giving him
his mountain legs. Hence, while the hoper enjoys only the future, the
achiever, if his joy-digesting apparatus be working properly, rejoices
with exceeding great joy in past, present, and future alike. He has an
advantage of three to one over the merely hopeful traveler. And when
they meet this is the song he sings:--

Mistress Joy is at your side
Waiting to become a bride.

Soft! Restrain your jubilation.
That ripe mouth may not be kissed
Ere you stand examination.
Mistress Joy's a eugenist.

Is your crony Moderation?
Do your senses say you sooth?
Are your veins the kind that tingle?
Is your soul awake in truth?

If these traits in you commingle
Joy no more shall leave you single.

II

THE BRIMMING CUP

Exuberance is the income yielded by a wise investment of one's
vitality. On this income, so long as it flows in regularly, the
moderate man may live in the Land of the Joyful Heart, incased in
triple steel against any arrows of outrageous fortune that happen to
stray in across the frontier. Immigrants to this land who have no such
income are denied admission. They may steam into the country's
principal port, past the great statue of the goddess Joy who holds
aloft a brimming cup in the act of pledging the world. But they are
put