from _Polonius_ in his farewell speech to his son _Laertes_--as good
today as four hundred years ago, and they will continue to be so until
the end of time.

It matters not how familiar we may be with these lines it is no waste of
time to read them over again once in awhile. They seem to fit the
_practical side of life_ perfectly. If we have any complaint by reason
of their brusqueness we have only to temper our interpretation according
to our own sense of justice. In other words if we wanted to loan a
"ten-spot" now and then we would just go ahead and do it--meanwhile, to
save you the trouble of looking up these lines, here they are in "Laugh
and Live"--

And these few precepts in thy memory
See thou character--Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel: but, being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice:
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous sheaf in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry,
This above all--_to thine ownself be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man_.

[Illustration: "Wedlock in Time"--The Fairbanks' Family]

The time has come to close this little book. It has been a great
pleasure to write it and a greater pleasure to hope that it will be
received in the same spirit it has been written. These are busy days for
all of us. We go in a gallop most of the time, but there comes the quiet
hour when we must sit still and "take stock." I know this from the
letters that come to me asking my opinion on all sorts of subjects.
People believe I am happy because my laughing pictures seem to denote
this fact--_and it is a fact_! In the foregoing chapters I have told
why. If, in the telling I shall have been instrumental in adding to _the
world'