【正文】 change from young to old synchronizing with the natural ageing process so as to keep in harmony with nature, for harmony itself is beauty, 5 while the other way round will only end in unpleasantness. To be in the elder39。s unique qualities to their advantage. To display personal charm in a casual and natural way, it is important for one to have a clear knowledge of oneself. A master packager knows how to integrate art and nature without any traces of embellishment, so that the person so packaged is no modity but a human being, lively and lovely. A young person, especially a female, radiant with beauty and full of life, has all the favor granted by God. Any attempt to make up would be selfdefeating. Youth, however, es and goes in a moment of doze. Packaging for the middleaged is primarily to conceal the furrows ploughed by time. If you still enjoy life39。 I asked for the doctor. She prayed for him. I held the CAT scan up to the light and searched for answers. No one can know what you will feel or fear in a time of need, but I learned that in this, the most difficult time of my life, the people our family depended upon most were people we had never met, people who we would likely never see again—strangers. We depended upon strangers, strangers who knew their duty was to help others. We depended upon the nurses who cared so well for our son, who cooed to him and caressed him, who watched me hold him through the night and never seemed to notice how ugly a man is when he cries. We depended upon the hostel that gave us a place to stay near the hospital, upon the members of my union who believe caring for our child39。 some sought to help others. Some prayed。d had a stroke. I didn39。 this is my home. Kindness of Strangers Our son Owen was born just as Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast. Two days later, as Katrina neared landfall, Owen began suffering seizures。 yet the perchance had more and more of emphasis as life went on, and at the moment when fate was secretly smiling on me, I had all but abandoned hope. I have my home at last. This house is mine on a lease of a score of years. So long I certainly shall not live。 let beauty of detail be added if one has the means, the patience, the eye. To me, this little bookroom is beautiful, and chiefly because it is home. Through the greater part of life I was homeless. Many places have I lived, some which my soul disliked, and some which pleased me well。 be the walls only plain, and I am satisfied. The first thing in one39。 I am attacked by no unkindly draught。s ease. The fabric is sound。 never the closing of a door or window. Oh, blessed silence! My house is perfect. Just large enough to allow the grace of order in domestic circumstance。 they steal half the power. Cheer is strength. Nothing is so well done as that which is done heartily, and nothing is so heartily done as that which is done happily. Be happy, is an injunction not impossible of fulfillment. Pleasure may be an accident。s delicate mechanism。 it is hard work being cheerful at a funeral, and it is a good deal harder to keep the frown from your face when you are in the throng of the worry worn ones. Yet, we have no right to be dispensers of gloom。 worry cuts the deep, downglancing lines on the face。t yet thought of, which will enable you to feel good about your choice, and then search for what it is. You are not always the victim in life。m letting down a bunch of people. If I do the other, I39。m trying to resolve, a weekend in the near future where I have conflicting demands and values, and need to be in two places at the same time. I have agonized over this decision because my intuition is not giving me a clear answer and I haven39。 having a child and doing those Dad things like coaching my son’s baseball team, paddling around the creek in the boat while he’s swimming with the dogs。 it costs more than any other thing, for it is worth more than all other things. Essentially it never is inherited, but always acquired by processes often slow and toilsome and at great price. If you would be perfect you must pay the price of perfection. Unless the passion of life is this perfection it never will be your possession. Dreams of ideal goodness only waste the hours in which it might have been achieved. No man ever finds character in his sleep. The education of the heart is a thing even more definite than the education of the head. The school of character has an infinite variety of courses and an unending curriculum. This does not mean that this prize of eternity falls only 2 to those who devote themselves wholly to selfculture, to the salvation of their own souls. The best lives have thought little of themselves, but they have lived for the ends of the soul, to help men to better living, to save them from the things that blight and damn the soul. Like the Leader of men they have found the life unending by laying down their lives, paying the full price, selling all in order that right and truth and honor and purity, love and kindness and justice might remain to man. Three Passions I Have Lived for Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy—ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my life for a few hours for this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness— that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heav