liant feats
in it, until the day he was elected to the French Academy, and thereby
became entitled to $300 a year. "Then my mother was a little reassured;
thenceforth, _j'avais une place_."

When the close of the year sets us to reckoning up how much we have made
of life, pray what is that "success" of which we all talk so glibly? It
is plainly a standard varying according to each man's taste and
temperament, his humility or vanity, and shifting as his life advances.
What to the Bohemian is success to the Philistine is stark failure. The
anchoret looks on this sublunary sphere as one of sighing, the attorney
as one of suing--there being all that difference betwixt law and gospel.
Sixty years cannot see life through the eyes of sixteen. When men,
fearing to measure themselves, seek the judgment of their fellows,
adulation or affection may lead astray. In the year's retrospect of
science, touching the solar eclipse it is said: "Cape Flattery is our
northwestern cape, and there occurred the largest obscuration of the sun
in the United States." "Cape Flattery," I fear, is the locus of largest
obscuration for the United States every year, and was particularly so in
the past twelvemonth of jubilee and gratulation; and what the mantle of
flattery is for the sunlight of truth in the nation it is in the
individual. In politics, at any rate, the centennial year is closing
with some reproof of our all-summer conceit. Our frame of government is
not so flawless as we fancied; the pharisaic contrast we drew between
our politics and those of other nations is no longer so effective.

And with men as with nations, a ray of clear light reveals the shams and
shortcomings of what is hastily styled success. The pushing, elbowing
fellow gets ahead in the struggle of life, but his success is a
questionable one. The bargaining man, who, partly by instinct and partly
by practice, judges everything from the point of view, "How is that
going to affect me?" will no doubt make money. Even his most
disinterested advice pivots on the thought, "What will pay me best?" as
the magnet surely wheels to the pole. But when all is done, to have
achieved this artistic perfection of self-seeking is a sorry account to
give of life.

Thus, the very successes on which we plume ourselves are sometimes
badges of disaster, as we ourselves may secretly know if others do not.
"When one composes long speeches," says Jarno, "with a view to shame his
neighbors, he sho