After this description the two friends CONTENTS “Rejoiced they were not men, but dogs.” An Italian wit has defined man to be “an animal which troubles himself with things which don’t concern him”; and, when one thinks of the indefatigable way in which people pursue pleasure, all the while deriving no pleasure from it, one is filled with amazement. “Life would be very tolerable if it were not for its pleasures,” said Sir Cornewall Lewis, and I am satisfied that half the weariness of life comes from the vain attempts which are made to satisfy a jaded appetite. There are many things which are not luxuries per se, but become so if indulged in to excess. Take, for instance, smoking and drinking. One pipe a day and one glass of wine a day are not luxuries, but a great many p. 54a day are luxuries. So lying in bed five minutes after you wake is not a luxury, but so lying for an hour is. The man who is fond precociously of stirring may be a spoon, but the man who lies in bed half the day is something worse. Then it must be remembered that a single indulgence in one luxury produces scarcely any effect on the mind or body, but a habit of indulging in that luxury has a great effect. p. 54 CONTENTS “The sins which practice burns into the blood, And not the one dark hour which brings remorse Will brand us after of whose fold we be.” I am surely right in noticing that the rich man is said to have fared sumptuously every day, as though faring sumptuously might have no significance, but the constantly faring sumptuously was what had degraded and debased the man below the level of the beggar at his gate. I feel that to be luxurious occasionally is no bad thing, if we can keep our self-control, and return constantly to simple habits. There is something very natural in the prayer which a little child was overheard to make—“God, make me a good little girl, but”—after a pause—“naughty sometimes.” It is the habit of being naughty which is pernicious. Can anyone doubt that the man who, on the whole, leads a hardy and not over-indulgent life will be more capable of performing any duty which may devolve upon him than a man who “had but fed on the roses and lain in the lilies of life.” Sydney Smith, in his sketches of Moral Philosophy, notices that habits of indulgence grow on us so much that we go through the act of indulgence without noticing it or feeling the pleasure of it; yet,
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