to count after middle life. They
have wasted their ammunition and are sent to the rear--there is no
longer use for them on the firing-line. Youth is so strong that it
wastes power like a millionaire of vitality. But you will need all
this dissipated energy later on--every ounce of it.

And so, while I would have you labor to the last limit of your
strength while you are about your work, I would also have you regain
the strength thus consumed. I would have you let Nature fill up your
empty batteries. Hence the suggestion of vacations, a level mind, and
books of serenity.

While you _do_ work, pour your full strength into every blow; but
having done your best do not spoil it by lying awake over it. No
half-heartedness in your task, however. If you try to save yourself
while you are about your business--if you "try to do things easy"--you
will neither work well nor rest well nor do anything else well.

I know there are those who cannot, for long, quit work--those who "have
their noses to the grindstone," to borrow one of those picture-sentences
of the people. In the far off end to which evolution tends, civilization
will doubtless reach the point where every human being may have his
solid month of play, repose, and recuperation--though this cannot be, of
course, while nation competes with nation. A universal industrial
agreement alone can compass that happy end. And do we not here
perceive, afar off, one of the vast and glorious tasks for the statesmen
of the future?

Meanwhile, if every man may not have an entire season of holiday, he
may have every day his hour of fun and rest. For every man that, at
least, is possible. And, too, he whom necessity drives hardest
owns--absolutely owns--for himself one day in seven. Not so bad after
all, is it? Not the ideal condition, but still quite tolerable.
Fifty-two days in three hundred and sixty-five, nearly two months in
the year, already given every man by the usage of our Christian
civilization for the purpose of "rest from all his work"; and with
divine example encouraging and instructing him in its use.

A man can get along on these two months distributed at the intervals
of one in every seven days. He can get along, that is, if he really
rests--really gives himself up to the sane joy of normal repose. The
humblest toiler, even in our greatest cities, can find physical
renewal and soul's upliftment in forest, at river's side, or on the
shore of lake or ocean--thanks to