“ We are not chafed and fretted by duties irksome to us, because uncongenial. We are fulfilling destiny, and fulfilling it with completeness of purpose. Those around us feel the warm, penetrating sunshine of our hearts, and they grow warm under the mystic touch of the sun. It is for this reason that happiness becomes a holy quest with us, for out of it spring the virtues which robe life in beauty and gladness. One of the most precious of human faculties is the power to enjoy.
Self-denial is either a tyranny or a virtue, and should be praised with circumspection. ”

“ No subject is uninteresting if discoursed with an engaging pen, for words throw colour-magic on things that are common-place and give charm to them. I have watched Italian sunlight playing on the crumbling plaster walls of a peasant's cottage on the Tuscan hills, drenching them in opal and rose-carmine splendours, changing them into the image of a fairy palace. Words cast sunlight on commonplace, familiar things, flushing them with a radiance all their own, and so awaking our mind to see new beauties, or old beauties made manifest in a new light which had been staled by the lethargy of custom. ”

“ It was the poetry, the luxury, the fine art of life all rolled into one, and it quickened the gay emotions within him that seeing a good play, hearing an eloquent sermon or driving a spanking four-in-hand to Ascot on a fine June morning, excites in other people. There are various buttons to press, but they all send the same thrill of earthly pleasure tingling through the human frame. Different hands strike the same chords on the harp of life, and they tremble into song.
Some heroically minded people assert there are only two things in life: duty and happiness. ”

“ The aptness of an image is lifelike, and a vision floats across your mind; the happy turn of a sentence sticks. The fresh, clear-cut thought shot out boldly from the writer's brain conveys a new idea; you recall the touch of humour resembling a patch of warm sunshine twinkling on the landscape, and your lips curve into a smile. There are passages of tenderness also that you treasure, because they find your heart like shafts of love feathered with joy. ”

“ The people did not know and did not want to know the truth about their creed. They had neither the leisure nor the brains to think for themselves. The cake is baked; it is eaten with relish. Hungry men at table do not analyze their food; they eat it and are thankful. The people did not know, but the people had feeling. The Church stirred their feelings to the uttermost, played upon the heart-strings of joy and sorrow, hope and fear, faith and love, until their tumultuous emotions were aroused and they believed blindly according to priestly orders. ”

“ Democracy is the unknown god it will be fashionable to worship when the war is over. Now we are all wasting ink and paper and taxing our small brains prophesying what the world will be like in the flowering-time of peace, when everybody will become deliriously happy, wise, and good. We shall move more cautiously then, like a cat stepping circumspectly over broken glass on top of the garden wall. We will make no mistakes, as we did in the feckless past, bringing us not only bleeding feet, but wounded hearts. ”

“ Old furniture is delightful in your home because it is old. Age has an alchemy of its own that ennobles the work of man. A brand-new house is deadly unromantic, even if it is a dream of architectural excellence. Its appearance is garish and crude. New stones and raw bricks are ugly in the days of their youth, but age transforms the place, be it manor-house or thatched cottage, until enchantment haunts the fabric. ”

“ Do not erect mural tablets to dead ambitions in the little sanctuary of your memory; build altars there instead whereon you can offer acceptable oblations of praise for evils escaped and for the crown of loving-kindness with which the Everlasting Arms encircle you.
If we only had the gift of humour on us it would make "life more amusing than we thought." Our eyes would open to a new world wherein kinder people dwell and where brighter sunshine warms the heart's red blood and chases down the gloom we anticipate to-morrow that may never come. ”

“ THE LURE OF AN OLD TUSCAN GARDEN
A delightful French writer says "to grow old in a garden in sight of softly undulating hills, beneath a sky variable as the human soul, is very sweet, very consoling, very easy. One becomes more of a child and for the first time a philosopher. Poetry and wisdom on every hand permeate the close of life, just as the oblique rays of the setting sun penetrate into the heart of the densest foliage, which is impervious to the vertical beams of noonday." ”

“ It is a doleful religion that uproots every flower in the garden as a noxious weed until only the naked brown earth remains to gaze upon in the blessed sunshine. It is a scurvy trick of virtue to spill the heady liquor on the ground and then with a flourish place the empty chalice an offering on the altar. Abstinence is the morality of the weak, temperance is the morality of the strong.
A deep enjoying nature is one of God's best gifts to man. The happy man is generally the best of his breed. The good are usually happy, and the happy are usually good. ”

“ To expect by flattening down inequalities, removing temptations, and giving everybody a living wage of £2 per week, England will flower into a Garden of Eden where people are all good and happy and pay no taxes, and where angels will come and converse with us in the cool of the day, is to expect the impossible. To expect by adapting the lot to man instead of adapting man to his lot you will create an earthly paradise out of a world of wickedness is to expose your ignorance of human nature and to admit your incapacity for adjusting its wrongs. ”

“ A man enters the auction-room in a happy, breezy frame of mind, not to buy, just to look on and see what things are fetching. The serpent of the place tempts him, and he is a lost soul. His good resolutions evaporate like water on a hot plate, leaving no trace behind. The fighting impulse in him leaps up, and he bids and bids again, and eventually he finds himself the possessor of a rare old mahogany bureau hatched in the reign of our King George, but inadvertently described in the catalogue as a masterpiece of the cabinet-maker's craft composed in the times of Queen Anne! ”

“ It is a genial gathering, but the man who understands not roses would be speechless in their midst and not a little bored. Conversation cools off, the evening shadows lengthen, and in an interlude of silence there is a sort of whispering stillness in the warm evening air, as if the flowers and grass and trees are all saying kind words to one another, for having done their best to please. The lure of the garden is never so poignant as at this great moment, for your heart is brimming of sweet content, and you say to yourself: "Can it be true? Can anything in the world be more beautiful?" ”

“ Crowns are going cheap in the market to-day, and the divine right of kings is a broken weapon flung in the mud of the world's scorn and picked up as a toy for Punch to provoke laughter. The old nobility is losing its ancient charter to sit exclusive in the high places of honour, and the common people--the new caste--are coming into possession and power. The working-man must be tailored to the grand part he plays in history. He will feel uneasy perhaps wearing his first new dress suit--it will worry him like a misfit. But clothes add splendour to our common lot. ”

“ Meridian sunshine has not fructified the promise of youth as we appointed it. Lean years have eaten up years of plenty. We have gathered tares with the wheat which brought disappointment into the storehouse. Varied experiences have chequered life with cross lights and shadows. The grand ideals of sanguine youth have dissolved like dreams at daybreak, and instead of the great achievement ours is the common lot. Rates and taxes are hardy annuals that flourish undisturbed amidst the ruins. Are we downhearted because the romance of life has fizzled out like spent fireworks and left us in darkness? ”

“ The writer's lure fixes you even as a beautiful sympathetic picture holds you up by its witchery of art. In the picture warmth of colour, grace of line, melting tints, dreamy distance, and an added mystic charm brooding over all, voice lovingly your taste in art, and, like a haunted man, you carry the landscape about with you all day long. It intrudes on your mind midst pressing business affairs; the sunlight sleeping on the hills creates a pleasant interlude of thought when engrossed in life's little worries. ”

“ This is where our heroic Countess steps in splendour.
Why immolate oneself on the altar of family pride? A false goddess sits enshrined there on a false throne. Why live on the reputation a forefather won in the Middle Ages? That reputation is now spent capital; it is worthless scrip on the social market to-day. Build another reputation for yourself, clean and sweet and new. If ill luck drops you in the ditch, to maintain inviolate the family honour you must get up and with ungloved hands work your way out of it like a man. Sell jam.
Perhaps you hate wearing a brand-new reputation. ”

“ It is the effort to do something beyond the power of words; it is the effort to investigate the alluring Infinite with a mind closely fettered within the cramped and narrow finite that can only stretch forth a hand here and there between prison bars and touch the azure of infinitude which is the dreamland of the soul; it is this reaching out that brings beauty into language: it enflames the imagination; it ruffles the emotions; unutterable thoughts linger on the lips and fail to break away. ”

“ He must build a new romantic world for Himself and His followers to live in outside the orthodox world of His day, if they wanted liberty to breathe, and so He began at the bottom of society and quietly built upwards. He was just a man walking amongst suffering humanity, and was one of the sufferers Himself. He came like dew descending on mown grass, noiseless, fragrant, healing; silently He ministered amongst the people, winning home to human hearts by sympathy and gentleness and love, and gradually the new kingdom of righteousness grew up in the midst of the weary old world. ”

“ A book haunts you in the selfsame way as a picture. You read a book, and it stirs your emotions and captivates your fancy, and for a time it possesses you like a living spirit. The writer's lure holds you in its grip. The book soaks into you. A sentence here and there leaps to memory during odd moments of the day; the rhythm of the language ripples musically as a chime of bells, and you repeat the sentence to yourself again and again. ”

“ Beauty was barred as a Divine attribute. The dismal meeting-house where they worshipped was the whitewashed prison in which the captured Deity dwelt. The burning light of this dread Presence enraptured the elect souls and intimidated the uncovenanted and graceless sinners, while the vast multitude of the nation held aloof, dreading contact with a religion so fierce and yet so gloomy, and they waited patiently through the shivering night of Roundhead rule, like watchmen on the city walls, for the coming of the king to set English homes once again humming with joy. ”

“ Their wit is brilliant, it scintillates like running water in the sunshine, but it cuts like a razor. Everybody within reach of their tongue, even innocent people, feel the whip of their capricious temper. I suppose some grim pleasure feeds their fiery nature when they subdue friend and enemy under them. It is an unenviable pleasure which they enjoy; nobody shares with them, and when their ill-humour dies down it must leave a nasty taste in their mouth. ”

“ To bear pain for the grim joy of bearing it brings no reward. Do not even the Stoics the same? But to bear pain rather than surrender truth or to cover a suffering friend is a loving and heroic act, meriting a V.C. when spiritual honours are distributed.
The old painters pictured in glowing witchery of colour the ordeal by suffering as the master-key that opened the gates of paradise to macerated mortals. The old writers drove home the same insidious error with all the pious fervour of their fluent pen, and thus men became fascinated with the doctrine of self-immolation as the highest good. ”

“ The Divine purpose in man is growth, not repression of growth; it is to expand, to unfold, to develop character. To pass from bud to flower in moral and spiritual excellence, not to stunt manhood till its fairest features are arrested in growth, and moral atrophy sets up a canker in the bud, and ugliness usurps the seat of beauty in a man's character. Ugliness everywhere may be left to the devil as his monopoly. Self-denial is the grubby chrysalis; happiness is the golden butterfly on the wing.
Not self-denial, but enjoyment, is the highest good and the truest test of character. Enjoyment ”

“ We have played the game, and now we watch others take their innings. It is good fun to watch. I tell you it is music to the eye watching the gay young world go its own way. The swagger, the bravoure, the buoyancy of its manners, stagger the dull parental mind. There is rhythm in its movements, there is character in its gaiety. It tops the record of the far-off days of splendour when we, their portly ancestors, were down in the arena beating up the dust of conflict, and considered ourselves the cream of modernity and the finest goods in the market. ”

“ There are dull, prosy, somnolent words that baffle like a London fog, envelop the writer's meaning in dense obscurity, and lure the reader's mentality into quagmires of perplexity and doubt.
There are ambrosial, honeyed, ornate words that regale us with fair visions of life, and steep the mind in dreams of romance and intoxicate with amorous delight. There are treacherous, lying words that distil murder in the air as they wing their evil flight. They strike deadly as a keen stiletto, or spit poison like a venomous adder in the grass. ”

“ She had pride, but not vanity. Vanity is a coquette and says, "What do you think of me?" and tremblingly awaits your verdict. Pride says, "I am as good as you are, and I don't care a damn." It is not every decadent Countess who sells jam to keep her end up in this see-saw world. It requires grit and a rare brand of pride uncommon in the quality to rise to the occasion. There is a vain pride that welters into nothingness in the dismal hour of failure, and starves tragically like a rat in a trap rather than help itself or accept help from others. ”

“ This is the flowering-time of Christianity. The Christian sect, yesterday the outcasts and scum of the earth, are now received into polite society, dine in the best houses, and are welcomed everywhere. The bishops of the Church are dug out of their deep burrows in the stuffy underground where they practised the simple life; they put off their poverty of pocket and meekness of spirit, and are robed in gorgeous raiment and rank amongst the rulers of the earth. They are transfigured men in mind and in manners. ”

“ I dearly love the grace of antiquity that mellows the venerable homesteads of England and blends the intermingling lustre of tradition with the roll of their lengthening years.
Age likewise has a mellowing influence on furniture. Obliteration of exactitude of form is essential charm in it as it is in a man or woman. You resent the loudness of a newly made rich man. His manners smell strongly of varnish just put on; his vanity and self-importance are unsavoury morsels to swallow without salt. He is a terror to his polite neighbours and a stranger to himself. ”

“ In fact, every man makes his own happiness.
We all distil pleasure out of life in our peculiar way. Only our ways differ as the poles asunder. One man cannot understand where the other man's relish for life comes in. What is nauseous as bitter herbs in one mouth tastes delicate as the wines of Orvieto on another palate. A famous American millionaire found greater satisfaction in the simple pleasure of attending funerals than in all the superb luxuries which his millions brought him. We do not envy his simple pleasure. It was an innocent method of enjoyment peculiarly his own. ”

“ Some people have "an air" about them, and the atmosphere they move in is intoxicating to those dwelling under the spell of their presence. You cannot crush people who have personality. Over and over again it turns the scales in their favour in the competitions of life. Their virtues may not be of the celestial, their talent may lack glitter, but their personality grips you with its pomp and splendour, and they sit amongst the mighty, imposing themselves on gods and men. ”

“ And so the egg of social reform gets addled before it is hatched, and alas! the glittering city of ten thousand joys for mankind to dwell in recedes farther and farther into the sweet dreamland of the future.
One architect of Utopia proposes to upbuild the city of Human Happiness by hand labour. Brick by brick it is to rise in colossal proportions and flowering beauty. He starts with the individual as the foundation and finishes with the individual as top-stone. He works by gradual and peaceful process to attain his splendid purpose. His method of work is unpopular because it is slow. ”

“ It means living from choice on the shady, dank side of the street rather than basking in the open sunny piazza when only a few steps place you there, where the children play and the old men foregather deep in the hallowed sunshine. Self-denial is not the crowning virtue--it is just the market price we pay that we may garner a harvest of happiness in the recompensing days of autumn. ”

“ He was not a stump orator inflaming the radical passions of the masses, bating them into red fury by pictorially describing the wickedness of the classes. He proposed no easy road to riches as a trap to catch the envious poor. He did not sit in his study formulating a scientific creed to mystify people with a religion of words and phrases; He lived in the open air a noble life that men could see and believe in. It is the mind, not the soul, that asks a creed to help its faith; the heart believes without the crutches of theological formula to support it. ”

“ Capital wants washing thoroughly from its iniquity and purging with hyssop before it is fragrant and can discourse virtue to the working classes.
Capital and Labour must forgive each the sins of the past, and as Brains and Hands work together in mutual confidence and esteem. Brains and Hands are not hard-set hereditary foes. They are blood relatives, members of the same body-politic, and must hold together for their common good. They are not even business opponents with clashing interests spoiling to cut each other's throat and smash the opposition concern with fiery glee of heart. ”

“ THE LURE OF SELF-DENIAL
Self-denial is not the highest form of virtue, nor is it a permanent condition of life for man to live in; yet it is a lure that draws men to martyrdoms as the flame collects moths to the burning. Man was not predestinated to a life of self-abnegation. Self-denial is a compromise between misery and happiness. Human nature does not thrive on compromise; it does not develop in austerities. Self-denial has its value in the scheme of moral education. Training is good for man if he does not carry it too far. ”

“ A lady friend who lived to a ripe old age said to me jocosely, "To be a good gardener you need a wooden back with an iron hinge to it, for you are bending and stooping all day long in the garden." Only by constant labour spent on the good brown earth can you become candidate for possession of this useful garden requisite, a wooden back with an iron hinge to it, or the neatest imitation offered on the market. In the garden you get in touch with Nature, breathe fresh air, cultivate a contented mind, and never stagnate in idleness or degenerate into ennui. ”