ou, under whose influence
alone the soul of a young man grows into real grandeur, power, and
beauty. And be sure that you let each day have its play-hour.

"I would not care to live," said one of the very ablest and most
eminent members of the American Catholic priesthood--"I would not care
to live," said he, "if I could not have my play-hour, music, and
flowers. They are God's gifts and my necessity. Every young man who
has a home commits a crime if he does not each day bring one hour of
joy into his household."

The man who said that is not only brilliant and wise, but one of the
most exalted souls it has ever been my fortune to know. And his words
have good sense in them, have they not? Make that good sense yours,
then. Make a play-hour each day for yourself and wife and children. I
say children, for I assume, of course, that when you are making a new
home you are making a _home_ indeed.

Very well. The absence of children is either unfortunate or immoral. A
purposely childless marriage is no marriage at all; it is merely an
arrangement. Robert Louis Stevenson calls it "a friendship recognized
by the police." A house undisturbed and unglorified by the wailings
and laughter of little ones is not a home--it is a habitation.

There is in children a certain immortality for you. Most of us believe
in life after death; and that belief is a priceless possession of
every human being who has it. But even the man who has not this faith
beholds his own immortality in his children. "Why of course I am
immortal," said a scientist who believed that death ends all. "Of
course I am immortal," said he, "there goes my reincarnation"; and he
pointed to his little son, glorious with the promise of an exhaustless
vitality.

There is no doubt at all that association with infancy and youth puts
back the clock of time for each of us. Besides all this, it is the
natural life, and that is the only thing worth while. The "simple
life" is all right, and the "strenuous life" excellent. The "artistic
life" is charming, no doubt, and all the other kinds of "lives" have
their places, I suppose. I am interested in all of them. But I am much
more interested in the natural life. That alone is truthful. And,
after all, only the truthful is important.

Get into the habit of happiness. It is positively amazing how you can
turn every little incident into a sunbeam. And, mark you, it is quite
as easy to take the other course. But what a coward a man