properly inoculated; it is,
as it were, part of your system. At forty it is a habit. After sixty the
disease is incurable.

TO LOVE--Active verb--very active--the most active of all.

MYSTERY--The principal food of love. This is probably why elevated souls
have raised love to the level of religion.

NEST--Sweet abode made for two. He brings soft moss, she a few bits of
grass and straw; then both give the finishing touch by bringing flowers.

PASSION--Violent affection that always finishes on a cross.

PLATONIC (LOVE)--A kind of love invented by Plato, a philosopher who sat
down at table only to sleep. Advice: If ever Platonic love knocks at
your door, kick him down your stairs unmercifully, for he is a prince of
humbugs.

RESOLUTION--A pill that you take every night before going to bed, and
which seldom produces any effect.

RESPECT--A dish of which women are particularly fond in public, and
which they seldom appreciate in private. How many women would be happier
if their husbands respected them less and loved them more!

SERVITUDE--Most bitter and humiliating state when it is forced upon us
by poverty; most sweet when it is imposed on a man by the woman whom he
loves.

TACT--The quality that, perhaps, of all, women admire most in men. The
next is discretion.

VEIL--Piece of lace which women put over their faces to excite the
curiosity of the passers-by. Women get married with a white veil, but
they always flirt with a black one.

CHAPTER XIV

VARIOUS CRITICISMS ON CREATION

I shall never forget the dry way and pitiful manner in which Robert
Louis Stevenson passed a funeral oration on Matthew Arnold. It was on a
Sunday evening, in the early spring of 1888, at a reception given at the
house of Edmund Clarence Stedman, whose poetry and scholarly attainments
excite as much admiration as his warm heart excites love in those who,
like myself, can boast of his friendship. Someone entered and created
consternation by announcing that a cablegram had just reached New York
with the news that Matthew Arnold was dead. 'Poor Matthew!' said
Stevenson, lifting his eyes with an air of deep compassion; 'heaven
won't please him!'

And it is true that on many occasions that great English writer had
hinted that if the work of the Creation had been given to him to
undertake, it would have proved more successful than it has been. For
that matter, many philosophers of a more or less cynical turn of mind
have critici