of distinction on the part of a rich couple to accept a prolonged visit from a poor couple, for then, and ever after the wife of the poor man is received in "Society" on an equal plane with the rich wife. Such a custom is unthinkable to people of decent American civilization, yet while we might prohibit the custom, we should have no right to condemn, with harshness and sternness, those to whom it seemed right.

As a nation we have a right to prescribe what shall be tolerated, allowed or approved of in our civilization. That is a matter of mutual agreement for our general peace and comfort. But we have no right to condemn the actions of those whose consciences have been trained to permit or approve of things disallowed and disapproved by us.

Therefore, to the inflexibly just, the intolerantly upright, the unforgivingly good I plead for a kindlier and more compassionate spirit. Be not stern and unyielding, but seek to let the spirit of a greater love take possession of you. Try to sing the Song of Compassion and Sympathy and see what the result will be, and my word for it, the responding songs from the grateful heart of the one thus treated will more than compensate for any loss of money, property or dignity you may suffer, and you will find yourself enjoying a new delight in "Singing," in your new found compassion, "through Life with God."

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE SONGS OF LIFE'S IDEALS

YOUTH is generally and rightly regarded as the

time for the creation of ideals. Are ideals ever formed? Do they not rather spring spontaneously into being, reaching the conscious-mind from the Immortal Mind and suggesting that Life is more than raiment, meat or money? When they are recognized and placed before one as a desirable goal, striven after, and, in a measure attained, they do not leave one in youth. They persist into old age, so that the octogenarian is as full of ideals as was the youth or maiden of eighteen. This, I believe, is the normal condition of man's mind towards idealism, and the reason so many persons believe that youth alone is the idealistic period is because the majority of young people allow their senses to capture their inclination and their will, and run away with them as a pair of fiery broncos will run away with an inattentive or incompetent driver.

Youth is the time for ideals, no doubt. The sap flows strong in the young tree and bids it grow and expand, but the highest idealism comes from the still small voice of the Godhead speaking, and he only

can hear it who listens attentively, carefully and persistently. And what wonderful songs this still small voice sings for the listening ear! What dreams of beauty, glory, and power it pictures; what visions of splendid attainment and high achievement it sets forth!

There are several reasons, doubtless, why youth loses its ideals, or, at least, ceases from their pursuit. Many yield to the temptations of the senses, to an easy life, to luxurious habits. I know two California girls, of good family and birth, fairly well to do. They both desired to "do something," in the literary field. Both had unusual attainments. The parents and friends of both bitterly opposed their going into newspaper-work although this seemed the best available method for giving them the training they needed. One had the independence and courage to "take the bit between her teeth," go to San Francisco and engage in work on one of the leading newspapers there. The other listened to her father's remonstrances, and fretted her days away in useless longing, though not more than nineteen years old. She drifted into the gay and frivolous set and one of the last times I saw her she was sitting tete-a-tete with a notorious man about town at one of our pleasure resorts, openly drinking cocktails, and even stronger beverages.

There are many young people who yield to this kind of pressure that of so-called "practical" rela

tives and friends, who see for them nothing but the lazy and luxurious life or the sordid commercial life. All commercial life need not be sordid. I believe many scores of merchants, like Peter Cooper, John Wanamaker, Marshall Field and others have had high ideals of business, and have stuck closely to them. Yet that many young men and women are seduced from their earlier and cherished ideals by social allurements no one can deny. Many are tempted by money inducements and fall by the wayside. It is so much easier to spend than to earn. Why "struggle" when one can "take it easy?" An automobile, fine clothes, luxurious living, all the time there is for fun and merry-making-these are a powerful temptation, and with Society organized as it is one cannot blame youth for accepting its gifts rather than gladly face the stern struggle of life. One can pity and regret, but not condemn.

But there is another and much larger class who almost perforce lose their ideals. They are the great mass of young men and women who have to work for a living and in the grind of modern competition find it so hard to secure barely the necessities, and perhaps a few of the comforts and luxuries of life, that they can give no time or thought to the following of their ideals. Experience has proven that a forgetfulness of ideals, or a failure, for any reason, to follow after them, soon leads them to fade away or entirely disappear. These reluctantly, doubtless,

lose their ideals, but it seems inevitable that they should go, though the new philosophy of applied psychology contends and affirms with irresistible force that the idealist need not lose his ideals in this way. We are assured, and my own experiences are teaching me to believe it, that "our thoughts are tools, and the life substance is shaped with these tools. Every hour we can stand before our halfformed self and with tools a thousand times finer than those of the finest craftsman of the physical plane, we can cut, from our own thought atmosphere, forms of exquisite perfection, until body, environment, friends, even our whole life, is a world of peace, power, love, joy, health and wealth, limitless and free."

If this wonderful affirmation be true, and if it be equally true, what Professor Weltmer says, that "What man can conceive man can achieve," then certainly there is no need for youth to lose its ideals.

They should be retained, sought after, attained as far as possible, only to give way for higher and more perfect ideals. I am not one of those who believe that ideals are always unattainable. But I do believe that he only is a true idealist, who, having attained, sets forth on a higher, more worthy, more nearly Divine achievement, and thus, ever attaining, is ever striving for something beyond. Under such. conditions as these one sees and feels that middle age is just as appropriate a period for the pursuit of