ed as ever. Life is apt, for
all vivid people, to be a species of high-hearted game: it is such fun
to play it as eagerly as one can, and to persuade oneself that one
really cares about the applause, the money, the fine house, the
comforts, the deference, the convenience of it all. And yet, if there
is anything noble in a man or woman, when the game is suddenly
interrupted and the toys swept aside, they find that there is
something exciting and stimulating in having to do without, in
adapting themselves with zest to the new conditions. It was a good
game enough, but the new game is better! The failure is to take it all
heavily and seriously, to be solemn about it; for then failure is
disconcerting indeed. But if one is interested in experience, but yet
has the vitality to see how detached one really is from material
things, how little they really affect us, then the change is almost
grateful. It is the spirit of the game, the activity, the energy, that
delights us, not the particular toy. And so the looking back on life
ought never to be a mournful thing; it ought to be light-hearted,
high-spirited, amusing. The spirit survives, and there is yet much
experience ahead of us. We waste our sense of pathos very strangely
over inanimate things. We get to feel about the things that surround
us, our houses, our very chairs and tables, as if they were somehow
things that were actually attached to us. We feel, when the old house
that has belonged to our family passes into other hands, as though
the rooms resented the intruders; as though our sofas and cabinets
could not be at ease in other hands, as if they would almost prefer
shabby and dusty inaction in our own lumber-room, to cheerful use in
some other circle. This is a delusion of which we must make haste to
get rid. It is the weakest sort of sentiment, and yet it is treasured
by many natures as if it were something refined and noble. To yield to
it, is to fetter our life with self-imposed and fantastic chains.
There is no sort of reason why we should not love to live among
familiar things; but to break our hearts over the loss of them is a
real debasing of ourselves. We must learn to use the things of life
very lightly and detachedly; and to entrench ourselves in trivial
associations is simply to court dreariness and to fall into a stupor
of the spirit.

And thus even our old memories must be treated with the same lightness
and unaffectedness. We must do all we can to forg