LAUGH AND LIVE

Again I find it expedient to resort to the personal pronoun and therefore this final chapter is to be devoted to “you and me.”  There are facts you may want to know for sure and one of them is whether or not I live up to my own prescription.

I do—­and it’s easy!

I have kept myself happy and well through keeping my physical department in first class order.  If that had been left to take care of itself I would surely have fallen by the wayside in other departments.  Once we sit down in security the world seems to hand us things we do not need.

Fresh air is my intoxicant—­and it keeps me in high spirits.  My system doesn’t crave artificial stimulation because my daily exercise quickens the blood sufficiently.  Then, too, I manage to keep busy.  That’s the real elixir—­activity!  Not always physical activity, either, for I must read good books in order to exercise my mind in other channels than just my daily routine—­and add to my store of knowledge as well.

Then there is my inner-self which must have attention now and then.  For this a little solitude is helpful.  We have only to sense the phenomena surrounding us to know that we must have a working faith—­something practical to live by, which automatically keeps us on our course.  The mystery of life somehow loses its density if we retain our spark of hope.

All of my life since childhood I have held Shakespeare in constant companionship.  Aside from the Bible—­which is entirely apart from all other books—­Shakespeare has no equal.  My father, partly from his love for the great poet, and partly for the purpose of aiding me to memorize accurately, taught me to recite Shakespeare before I was old enough to know the meaning of the words.  I remembered them, however, and in later years I grew to know their full significance.  Then I became an ardent follower of the Master Philosopher, than whom no greater interpreter of human emotions ever lived.  In the matter of sage advice there has never been his equal.  In “Hamlet” we find the wonderful words of admonition from Polonius in his farewell speech to his son Laertes—­as good today as four hundred years ago, and they will continue to be so until the end of time.

It matters not how familiar we may be with these lines it is no waste of time to read them over again once in awhile.  They seem to fit the practical side of life perfectly.  If we have any complaint by reason of their brusqueness we have only to temper our interpretation according to our own sense of justice.  In other words if we wanted to loan a “ten-spot” now and then we would just go ahead and do it—­meanwhile, to save you the trouble of looking up these lines, here they are in “Laugh and Live”—­