ternational commerce) as the nineteenth century was notable for the unblushing savagery of its unrestricted competitive commerce. Interdependence of man on man, class on class, nation on nation, is one lesson the war has taught. The whole world is fluid. In very truth it may be said that "Bliss is it in this dawn to be alive, but to be young is very heaven." Almost it seems as if the age of wealth-obsession were passing. Men's minds are bent on fashioning a civilization that shall not confer vast fortunes on the few, and grinding poverty on millions. The war exposed the rottenness of the pillars of civilization; Peace, it may be hoped, will usher in an era when goodwill to men" and "brotherhood of the classes " will not be pious hypocrisy.

Just because the young man of to-day will have a formative hand in the reconstruction of civilization, his decision as to whether he purposes to make money or make a life is of immense consequence. The alternatives before him are vital to himself, and in a measure to his age. While it is the positive duty of every young man to develop and exert every scrap of talent he possesses, every gift he can cultivate, every scrap of knowledge, skill, judgment, and wisdom he can acquire, it is supremely important into what channel his ambition should be directed. "Beware, Dick," says one of Rudyard Kipling's characters to an artist who was lowering his art standard for money. "Beware, or you will fall under the damnation of the check-book, and that is worse than death."

Thomas Carlyle said it was a tragedy of human life if one mind capable of knowledge should remain

ignorant. It has taken us three-quarters of a century to see that it is also economic waste for an educable mind to be left uneducated. A young man may have a brain, or a gift which, developed to the uttermost, may make the world his debtor-make him a saviour of society. If he fails to grasp any opportunity for cultivating it, or if the opportunity is denied him, his gift may go to waste, and the commonwealth-the world indeed-may be poorer for the neglect.

The highest ambition of a young man embarking on his career, and working out the strategy of his life, should be to win a reputation as one who never dodges hard work, never shirks responsibility, and never forfeits his self-esteem by lowering his standard of right dealing. To be known as a man whose word is his bond, is far more precious than to have the reputation of commanding a big bank balance. These qualities make success worthy. Success without them is failure. An honest man is still the noblest work of God.

H

II

THREE IDEALS

APPINESS, usefulness, goodness are three ideals of life which a well-advised young

man will keep ever before him as lodestars. Tolstoy, in War and Peace, sends his hero, Peter, the richest man in Russia, through a grim experience of misery that compels him to make a complete revaluation of life's values. "He learned," says Tolstoy, "that man is meant for happiness, and that this happiness is in him, in the satisfaction of the daily needs of existence; and that unhappiness is the fatal result, not of our need, but of our abundance." "Life," Professor William James, after quoting Tolstoy's dictum, adds, "is always worth living, if one have responsive sensibilities."

Possibly one should vary the order of these three ideals-placing goodness first and usefulness second -allocating happiness to the third place, because it is the reward of the other two virtues. With the years there comes to most men an ever-deepening conviction that the way of transgressors is hard, and that the path to happiness is along the hard road of duty, usefulness, and restraint. Maurice Maeterlinck, in a poetical allegory, The Blue Bird, shows that the quest for happiness always brings us back to the beaten track of unselfishness and duty.

Whenever I am tempted to doubt the dependence

of happiness on duty, I take down Boswell's Life of Johnson, and revive my memories of the "old struggler's" stern sense of duty. Johnson talked, or rather thundered forth, on most subjects, but he never said very much about duty. He simply did it-did it at all cost. I am not sure that he was a wholly happy man; but, as Mr. Augustine Birrell points out, he never whined over his hardships. Life was an incessant struggle to him. He was poor, halfblind, scrofulous, prone to melancholy, proud, resentful of the patronage to which he had to submit, fearful of death, especially death from the top downwards; but he went through a hard life, faithful to what he felt was his duty-a dutiful son, a dutiful husband, and a dutiful citizen.

We know Dr. Johnson as we know few living men -our nearest friends, even-and nobody knowing him through Boswell's wonderful biography can wholly escape his spell. There is a Johnson Club in London, and once Bonner, the famous Australian cricketer, was a guest at its annual dinner. Speaker after speaker had extolled Johnson; but when Bonner's turn to speak came, he naively confessed he had never heard of Dr. Johnson till that evening. Some one laughed, and Bonner hastily added by way of vindication: "Well, I come from a country where you could ride a whole day on horseback and never find a man who ever did hear of Dr. Johnson. But, after hearing about Dr. Johnson to-night, I will say this if I were not Bonner, the cricketer, I would like to be Dr. Samuel Johnson."

Glancing over "a wild moraine of forgotten books of a glacier of days gone by," my eye caught the

title of a volume, The Duty of Happiness. I did not open it, or want to open it. But it recalled the story of a cotton-operative who took his children for a happy day in the country one holiday. The little fellows were soon tired with walking, and, by the time they reached their destination, were peevish and tearful. "Look here," said their father impatiently, "I've brought you boys out for a happy day, and you've got to be happy; go and play in that field, and if you aren't happy in ten minutes I'll give you all three of you a good hiding until you are happy.”

The happiness of duty done is a reality-and there is not much happiness without it. The happiness that springs from a sense of usefulness in life is just as real. Whatever may be a man's function in lifewhether he is an architect, a doctor, a farmer, a lawyer, a clerk, a miner, or a manual laborer-he is an asset to the commonwealth and a useful member of society, if he does his duty efficiently and conscientiously. It is not sufficient to scrape through work without incurring censure. Duty demands

more than that-it demands that heart and soul should be put into work.

She

On the very eve of her execution, Nurse Cavell wrote a letter to the nurses with whom she had worked so single-mindedly, in which the guiding principle of her life found noble expression. reminded them that she had always taught them that "devotion to duty would bring you true happiness; and that the thought that you had done your duty earnestly and cheerfully before God and your own conscience would be your greatest support in the trying moments of life, and in the face of death."