tial things, the determination to have them and
let non-essentials go. They are the wise ones, the happy ones, the
free-from-worry ones.

Later I shall refer extensively to Mrs. Canfield's book _The Squirrel
Cage_. She has many wise utterances on this phase of the worry
question. For instance, in referring to the mad race for wealth and
position that keeps a man away from home so many hours of the day
that his wife and child scarce know him she introduces the following
dialogue:

One of them whose house isn't far from mine, told me that he
hadn't seen his children, except asleep, for three weeks.

'But something ought to be done about it!' The girl's
deep-lying instinct for instant reparation rose up hotly.

'Are they so much worse off than most American business men?'
queried Rankin. 'Do any of them feel they can take the time
to see much more than the outside of their children; and isn't
seeing them asleep about as--'

Lydia cut him short quickly. 'You're always blaming them for
that,' she cried. 'You ought to pity them. They can't help it.
It's better for the children to have bread and butter, isn't
it--'

Rankin shook his head. 'I can't be fooled with that sort of
talk--I've lived with too many kinds of people. At least half
the time it is not a question of bread and butter. It's a
question of giving the children bread and butter and sugar
rather than bread and butter and father. Of course, I'm a
fanatic on the subject. I'd rather leave off even the butter
than the father--let alone the sugar.'

Later on Lydia herself lost her father and after his death
her own wail was: 'I never lived with my father. He was always
away in the morning before I was up. I was away, or busy, in
the evening when he was there. On Sundays he never went to
church as mother and I did--I suppose now because he had some
other religion of his own. But if he had I never knew what it
was--or anything else that was in his mind or heart. It never
occurred to me that I could. He tried to love me--I remember
so many times now--and _that_ makes me cry!--how he tried
to love me! He was so glad to see me when I got home from
Europe--but he never knew anything that happened to me. I
told you once before that when I had pneumonia and nearly died
mother kept it from him because he was on a big case. It was
all like