who is like that.  He is what would be called an unsuccessful man; he has never had time to do his own talents justice, because his energies have always been at the service of other people; if you ask him to do something for you, he does it as exactly, as punctually, as faithfully as if his own reputation depended upon it.  He is now a middle-aged man with hundreds of friends and a small income.  He lives in a poky house in a suburb, and works harder than anyone I know.  If one meets him he has always the same beautiful, tired smile; and he has fifty things to ask one, all about oneself.  I can’t describe what good it does one to meet him.  The other day I met a cousin of his, a prosperous man of business.  “Yes,” he said, “poor Harry goes on in his feckless way.  I gave him a bit of my mind the other day.  I said, ’Oh, it’s all very well to be always at everyone’s beck and call, and ready to give up your time to anyone who asks you—­it is very pleasant, of course, and everyone speaks well of you—­but it doesn’t pay, my dear fellow; and you really ought to be thinking about making a position for yourself, though I am very much afraid it is too late.’”

The prosperous cousin did not tell me how Harry received his advice; but I have no doubt that he thought his cousin very kind to interest himself in his position, and went away absurdly grateful.  But I would rather, for all that, be in Harry’s poky lodgings, with a treasure of love and service in my heart, than in his cousin’s fine house in the country, the centre of a respectful and indifferent circle.

Of course there is one sad reflection that rises in one’s mind at the thought of such a life as my friend lives.  When one sees what a difference he makes to so many people, and what a beautiful thing his life is, one wonders vaguely why, if God makes men as he wills, he does not make more of such natures.  They are rare; they are the salt of the world; and I suppose that if the world were all salt, it would not be so rich and beautiful a place.  If everyone were like Harry there would be no one left to help; and I suppose that God has some reason for leaving the world imperfect, which even we, in our infinite wisdom, cannot precisely detect.

XXV

It is such a perennial mystery to me what beauty is; it baffles me entirely.  No one has ever helped me to discover in what region of the spirit it abides.  The philosopher begins by telling you that the simplest and most elementary form of beauty which appeals to every one, the beauty of human beings, has its root originally only in desire; but I cannot follow that, because that would only account for one’s admiring a certain kind of fresh and youthful beauty, and in admiring human beauty less and less as it declines from that.  But this is not the case at all; because there is a beauty of age which is often, in its way, a more impressive and noble thing than the beauty of