“My dear fellow, what a fool you’ve been!”

Yet this case is in essence the case of the wise plain man.  The chief difference between the two cases is that the wise plain man has enslaved himself for about thirty years instead of three, with naught but a sheer gambling chance of final reward!  Not being one of the rare individuals with whom business is a passion, but just an average plain man, he is labouring daily against the grain, stultifying daily one part of his nature, on the supposition that later he will be recompensed.  In other words, he is preparing to live, so that at a distant date he may be in a condition to live.  He has not effected a compromise between the present and the future.  His own complaint—­“What pleasure do I get out of life?”—­proves that he is completely sacrificing the present to the future.  And how elusive is the future!  Like the horizon, it always recedes.  If, when he was thirty, some one had foretold that at forty-five, with a sympathetic wife and family and an increasing income, he would be as far off happiness as ever, he would have smiled at the prophecy.

The consulting friend, somewhat nettled by the plain man’s bluntness, might retort: 

“I may or may not have been a fool.  That’s not the point.  The point is that I am definitely in the enterprise, and can’t get out of it.  And there’s nothing to be done.”

Whereupon the plain man, in an encouraging, enheartening, reasonable tone, would respond: 

“Don’t say that, my dear chap.  Of course, if you’re in it, you’re in it.  But give me all the details.  Let’s examine the thing.  And allow me to tell you that no case that looks bad is as bad as it looks.”

It is precisely in this spirit that the plain man should approach his own case.  He should say to himself in that reasonable tone which he employs to his friend, and which is so impressive:  “Let me examine the thing.”

And now the plain man who is reading this and unwillingly fitting the cap will irately protest:  “Do you suppose I haven’t examined my own case?  Do you suppose I don’t understand it?  I understand it thoroughly.  Who should understand it if I don’t?  I beg to inform you that I know absolutely all about it.”

Still the strong probability is that he has not examined it.  The strong probability is that he has just lain awake of a night and felt extremely sorry for himself, and at the same time rather proud of his fortitude.  Which process does not amount to an examination; it amounts merely to an indulgence.  As for knowing absolutely all about it, he has not even noticed that the habit of feeling sorry for himself and proud of his fortitude is slowly growing on him, and tending to become his sole form of joy—­a morbid habit and a sickly joy!  He is sublimely unaware of that increasing irritability which others discuss behind his back.  He has no suspicion that he is balefully affecting the general atmosphere of his home.