er the day is over I write these lines and
try to inoculate myself with a serum or toxin that will serve as a
safeguard on the morrow to ward off the things which try to annoy and
distract me from my purpose: to do, and to be, as nearly right and fair
as I can, in act and thought and word.

Continuity on a singleness of purpose is a valuable thing. Fabre spent
his life studying insect life. His books on the spider and others on the
life of insects are the result of a whole life spent on the one hobby or
study of insects.

My occupation has been full of abrupt changes. Each day is a
kaleidoscope, and so, as I write between times, these chapters may be
like the boy who said of the dictionary, "a mighty powerful book but the
subject changes so often."

I write these chapters as the spirit moves and opportunity allows, and
you may read the same way. But be sure you make opportunity happen
often.

OBSERVATION

Sitting on the Side Lines, Watching the Crowd

There is fun and interest and diversion all around us. All we need is
keen observation and we will see much that passes unnoticed to the
preoccupied person.

What an interesting thing is the great round world we live in. The
people are as interesting as fish in an aquarium.

See the rushing, surging crowd. Man, pushing along searching for
necessary things to be done, he builds cities, harnesses rivers, makes
ships to sail the seas to the uttermost parts of the earth. Man goes to
war, he builds death-dealing devices.

Man makes the desert blossom like a rose.

Here is the scientist in his laboratory, trying to unite certain
elements to produce new substance. Here is the beauty in her silken
nest; here the lover; there the musician; yonder the peanut man and in
the office building is the captain of industry: All busy bees deeply
absorbed in their respective interests, and intoxicated in the belief
that they are important and greatly necessary.

Yet in the broad measure of ages they are mere ripples on the sea of
time, faint bubbles on the eternal deep, and grains of sand at the
mountain foot.

Great man by his own measure, minute man by the great measure of time.
Mammoths to the near-sighted, mites to the far-sighted. Hustle and
bustle, crowd and push. They tramp down the weaker brothers in the mad
race after the golden shekels, which are only measures of ability to buy
and own material things; symbols of power to make others serve you.
These golden