will believe our word? Then leave theorizing and repair to the store of its examples. Not to lug in the case of lovers, overworked nowadays, who will think the warrior-thane of old, ranging the long shores and seas or drinking mead in meadhall, hearing the song of scop or gleeman and occasionally shouting his own tipsy praise, lived such life as when in overflowing loyalty he clasped the knees of his dear lord or flung himself before him in the battle-clash or followed him into defeat and death? And we have heard among our modern instances of more than several who when their loved ones died and freed them from slave-like devotion, have shortly followed after in the face of infinite diversionary possibilities. Why, work itself of the most drudging—not to speak of the most trifling play — may be turned into devotion,- best, probably, by being turned toward persons and thereby become a sort of spiritual play surpassing the corporeal in purity and permanence of joy. But this too what diversionist will heed?

Here, at any rate, abide these two, diversion and devotion the one a turning from the way of life, the other a straight driving onward. And between these two the crowd divides itself, with what prevailing choice is plain to see. Alas, poor crowd, how utterly indeed are you diverted, turned aside! And how indeed shall you be brought back into pathways of devotion?

4. SOCIAL AIMS

It has perhaps occurred to the patient reader, unless sleep has long since anticipated the occurrence, to wonder what may be my aim in weighing these activities, diversion and devotion. Is it my philanthropic purpose to persuade joyful diversionists into devotion's greater joys? There would seem more loudly crying needs and plaintive opportunities for our persuasion. It were somewhat better, I believe, to let the joyful throng gather its joys as hitherto the harvest probably repays the reaping and turn our altruistic efforts toward that growing number whom diversion does not satisfy and that greater multitude whom it has rarely visited, never for long.

But it will hardly do to bid either diverted or undiverted: “Be ye devoted"; because they simply won't act on instructions, and will probably laugh scornfully. For very rarely are men ever got to hunt the higher joys on straight tips and inside information. Tipsters and informants there have been since the beginnings of communication, and many famous formulas of happiness Pythagorean, Platonic, Epicurean, Stoic, and Christian, with their medieval and modern variations and negations,― have been spoken out of deep experience and repeated endlessly by sundry sign-posts eloquent planted over the world pathway, to what practical effect? The mass of us, hedged and hindered by necessity and habitude,

have been quite satisfied to hunt only happiness enough, spying it in the diversions of our native ditch or alley, and leaving with sceptical or scornful laugh the heights and the expanse to the aspiring or adventurous few.

And even if men were progressive enough to undertake experiments, the outcome would probably for the majority of experimenters prove quite disappointing. It is written that Saint Francis could with chanting the joys of serving Our Lady - Poverty win any whom their female relatives had not hidden away; but it is also written that the brethren of Saint Francis, when they had outspread the personal supervision of the saint, deposed the earlier Lady and set up several other Ladies in her stead. They had not found in a joy-seeking service the joys that he had promised: they had not brought with them the ingredients of that joy which Francis, having brought them, could find there. And the saint himself might have remembered how the summons came to him: not a coaxing call to happiness it was that came into his tavern life, no invitation to come revel in devotion; but another voice, announcing duty and if needful adding, not persuasive but imperative: "Thou thriftless debtor, pay thy debt long due, or." It made little mention, I surmise, of joys in store, spoke not at all of paying debt for sake of further gift; but had something to say, perhaps, of a certain debtors' prison, rather painful then to the imaginative mind. Thus much

somewhat too much-by way of illustrating what in philosophic dialect is called hedonistic paradox, and popularly explained to mean that one doesn't generally get joy hunting it.

That is, as we have been trying to say, few are in the first place hard gripped by persuasive precepts and fewer still held fast. So that few indeed have found their higher joys until these came as the unlooked-for consequences of necessity or duty, which did not commend, but commanded, even harshly. Comes Pure Reason to commend some loftier and broader life, how many will attempt it, or approve it? But comes the bidding clad in a right Voice of Duty, and then - for some of us, at least those dear former pleasures "shake and despoil themselves, and grow gray' with ashen pallor of lost charm in presence of that awful or that lovely word; and those alien heights that seemed so barren of all joy are now the only resting places for fear-goaded souls, and heaventouched pavilions for love-guided, who may bless the bidding that made them attainable.

Therefore, though our expansive-smiling, comfort-careful philanthropic friends would coax men to do thus and so in order to be happy, we that have profited from universal-historical allusions and Franciscan references, with subjoined observations, will set to work in other ways. We will speak as mouthpieces, or if possible act as personifications - though that is anticipating of imperatives without promissory postscripts,

which command unquestioning and unreckoning devotion. But we will the more on this account make sure the utmost meed of joy dwells in the doing or waits to crown it that we do not sacrifice the person to the imperative.

And we will also - since we are now in the way of planning test our imperative-to-be for possibilities of general utility. It shall produce not only for the individual joy the greatest-many closet, studio, and family devotions can do that, and little more—but "joy in widest commonalty spread"; it shall be of double benefit, the latter half of which may be much manifolded.

For the fact is, reader, that this little book is only, as I may already have remarked, another of those social gospels wherewith we have of late been pelted, though this will prove, I trust, a trifle different. As such, it aims not merely to move whom it may to any kind of devotion-office, study, studio, family, or mixed — but, more ambitiously, to move the individual into general devotion. To bring each into some kind and degree of devotion to all, is, I take it, the object of most social aims and gospels, whether under name of civic virtue, social righteousness, or other offensive title. And as the several dozen social imperatives now in occupancy of their appropriate spheres seem sorely lacking in impulsive strength, or at most do not seem charged with an all-adequate degree of it, I have ventured to push into their company this resuscitation of that ancient type which was