Barren Brains.

25

to fill a sieve, but, in fact, they have forgotten to stop the bunghole. Again, many are barren, because they take too long in making up their minds; they think too much. A loaf baked is better than a harvest contemplated. You were within an ace of inventing a steam-plough, but your neighbour dug his field.

Moreover, many people attempt too much. One man sickens over a feast, while another thrives on mutton. It may be well to have several irons in the fire, but you must leave yourself time to hammer one. This eagerness to multiply operations is a fertile source of failure. Much work is abortive, because it is manifold. There is all the difference in the world between the ability to turn your hand to anything, and the attempt to do everything at once; the man who tries the last, generally disappears in a debris of odds and ends. Had he contented himself with one chief work, say cutting hair, he would have become a flourishing hairdresser, had a vote for the borough, and dined, at least on Sundays, in plenty and peace.

It is true that change of work is a great relief; but there must be one governing object in our efforts. Above all, we want more holidays; men live too fast, and labour too

26

More Holidays needed.

hard. They want something more than change of occupation-they want more sleep, more unmitigated play, more unruffled repose. He

is a wise man who knows how to idle well. He will do most who knows how to do "nothing." Depend upon it, work is forwarded by occasional seasons of judicious vacancy, when we neither read nor think-when we clear out the workshop, and give the entire gang, hand and brains, a whole holiday—when we sweep the floor, and are content to leave the skull silent and empty. The tenants will come back rosy and fresh from their play in the fields. Doubtlessly, this clearance of the intellect is by no means an easy feat, but we may be sure that those will, in the end, prove the best workers who know when and how to rest.

LOOKING BACK FROM HALF-WAY.

HERE is one great advantage frequently enjoyed in middle age, denied to the old and the young -I mean the pleasure of revisiting childhood's scenes, with youth enough to find most of the old faces still there, and age enough to feel as no schoolboy can the recreating properties of a holiday. Happy the man of mid-life who has a father or mother living where he was born, where he is still called a "boy" by his parent, and "Master John" by the old gardener. When he went back from college, he used to give himself airs, and stick up for his manhood-contradicting his father, speaking contemptuously of the family small-beer, and showing that he felt his late escape from the uncertainties of hobbledehoyism. But But now, he loves the house for the very reminiscences of childhood which are forced upon him; he is now silently thankful for what, fifteen years ago, he kicked at, or accepted with protest.

28

The Old Home.

There is a charm in his old home, which his own proper address in the Post Office Directory will never possess although that has charms of its own by no means to be despised.

In the latter place, when he lands after a day's swimming, however successfully, against the stream, he cannot quite shuffle off his coil of citizenship along with his Inverness wrapper. He cannot lay aside all his cares with his umbrella.

There is no use making wry faces about it. I daresay you have been hard at work all day; well, you are not singular. Some would be thankful beyond the bounds of even melodramatic gratitude, at having such a home to hide in, out of the din of the great crowd which still throbs under the glare of gas. There are better men than you grinding away yet; so don't grumble about the cares of a household. Suppose you had no house at all!

Still, there are special charms in the old. home, far away, past lighted stations, through noisy tunnels, deep in the pleasant East. There is a charm in the old home which you cannot find in Tyburnia; a capacity for yawning, a general uncoiling of one's self, which is possible nowhere else. There you can defy the pressure of a profession; there you can

Who does not like to be spoiled? 29

escape all sense of responsibility and mastership. It is a place to rest in, to loosen each button of one's being, and breathe peace at every pore.

The effect is improved if at the same time you are happy in finding those there who spoil you. An impartial friend or relation is a pest of society. As if you didn't know your own weak places and dark corners, but must have a friend to help you to keep your eye upon them. With such, absence makes the heart grow fonder. No, no; give me a partial friend who likes me. Give me one who loves without ever wishing to know the reason why. Who does not like to be spoiled?

To me, one of the greatest enjoyments of such a visit as I have mentioned is to moon about, and let the stream of old associations and memories, started by long familiar objects, flow on without interruption.

Three days ago I was a drop of blood in the great "pulse of the world's right hand;" I was a grinding-wheel-I helped to raise the hum of Babylon.

Now, I am a fungus, pushed back through all the steps of species, a placid, happy fungus. A guinea ticket did it all in three hours. When the fly I rummaged up at the inn of the