without_.

Independence is a primary need for character, and independence can
only be learnt by doing without pleasant things, even unnecessarily.
Simplicity of life is an essential for greatness of life, and the very
meaning of the simple life is the laying aside of many things which
tend to grow by habit into necessities. The habit of work is another
necessity in any life worth living, and this is only learnt by
refraining again and again from what is pleasant for the sake of what
is precious. Patience and thoroughness are requirements whose worth
and value never come home to the average mind until they are seen in
startling excellence, and it is apparent what a price must have been
paid to acquire their adamant perfection, a lesson which might be the
study of a lifetime. The value of time is another necessary lesson of
the better life, a hard lesson, but one that makes an incalculable
difference between the expert and the untried. We are apt to be always
in a hurry now, for obvious reasons which hasten the movement of life,
but not many really know how to use time to the full. Our tendency is
to alternate periods of extreme activity with intervals of complete
prostration for recovery. Perhaps our grandparents knew better in a
slower age the use of time. The old Marquise de Gramont, aged 93,
after receiving Extreme Unction, asked for her knitting, for the poor.
"Mais Madame la Marquise a ete administree, elle va mourir!" said the
maid, who thought the occupation of dying sufficient for a lady of her
age. "Ma chere, ce n'est pas une raison pour perdre son temps,"
answered the indomitable Marquise. It is told of her also that when
one of her children asked for some water in summer, between meals, she
replied: "Mon enfant, vous ne serez jamais qu'un etre manque, une
pygmee, si vous prenez ces habitudes-la, pensez, mon petit coeur, au
fiel de Notre Seigneur Jesus Christ, et vous aurez le courage
d'attendre le diner." She had learned for herself the strength of
_going without_.

One more lesson must be mentioned, the hardest of all to be
learnt--perfect sincerity. It is so hard not to pose, for all but the
very truest and simplest natures--to pose as independent, being eaten
up with human respect; to pose as indifferent though aching with the
wish to be understood; to pose as flippant while longing to be in
earnest; to hide an attraction to higher things under a little air of
something like irreverence. It is strange th