other hand, is a fatuous spendthrift
of his fortune. He reminds us how close we are of kin to the
frolicsome chimpanzee. His attitude was expressed on election night by
a young man of Manhattan who shouted hoarsely to his fellow:

"On with the dance; let joy be unrefined!"

Neither should mere vivacity be mistaken for exuberance. It is no more
surely indicative of the latter than is the laugh of a parrot. One of
the chief advantages of the Teutonic over the Latin type of man is
that the Latin is tempted to waste his precious vital overplus through
a continuous display of vivacity, while the less demonstrative Teuton
more easily stores his up for use where it will count. This gives him
an advantage in such pursuits as athletics and empire-building.

The more exuberance of all varieties one has stored up in body and
mind and spirit, the more of it one can bring to bear at the right
moment upon the things that count for most in the world--the things
that owe to it their lasting worth and their very existence. A little
of this precious commodity, more or less, is what often makes the
difference between the ordinary and the supreme achievement. It is the
liquid explosive that shatters the final, and most stubborn, barrier
between man and the Infinite. It is what Walt Whitman called "that
last spark, that sharp flash of power, that something or other more
which gives life to all great literature."

The happy man is the one who possesses these three kinds of overplus,
and whose will is powerful enough to keep them all healthy and to keep
him from indulging in their delights intemperately.

It is a ridiculous fallacy to assume, as many do, that such fullness
of life is an attribute of youth alone and slips out of the back door
when middle age knocks at the front. It is no more bound to go as the
wrinkles and gray hairs arrive than your income is bound to take wings
two or three score years after the original investment of the
principal. To ascribe it to youth as an exclusive attribute is as
fatuous as it would be to ascribe a respectable income only to the
recent investor.

A red-letter day it will be for us when we realize that exuberance
represents for every one the income from his fund of vitality; that
when one's exuberance is all gone, his income is temporarily
exhausted; and that he cannot go on living at the same rate without
touching the principal. The hard-headed, harder-worked American
business man is admit