But I meant, if I thought you were in
the right mood for listening to it, to read you some paragraphs which
give in small compass the pith, the marrow, of all that my experience has
taught me. Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.
I took it early, as we all do, and have treated it all along with the
best palliatives I could get hold of, inasmuch as I could find no radical
cure for its evils, and have so far managed to keep pretty comfortable
under it.
It is a great thing for a man to put the whole meaning of his life into a
few paragraphs, if he does it so that others can make anything out of it.
If he conveys his wisdom after the fashion of the old alchemists, he may
as well let it alone. He must talk in very plain words, and that is what
I have done. You want to know what a certain number of scores of years
have taught me that I think best worth telling. If I had half a dozen
square inches of paper, and one penful of ink, and five minutes to use
them in for the instruction of those who come after me, what should I put
down in writing? That is the question.
Perhaps I should be wiser if I refused to attempt any such brief
statement of the most valuable lesson that life has taught me. I am by
no means sure that I had not better draw my pen through the page that
holds the quintessence of my vital experiences, and leave those who wish
to know what it is to distil to themselves from my many printed pages.
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