【正文】 en that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what—at last—I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine ...A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people— a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. The Blue Days Everybody has blue days. These are miserable days when you feel lousy, grumpy, lonely, and utterly exhausted. Days when you feel small and insignificant, when everything seems just out of reach. You can’t rise to the occasion. Just getting started seems impossible. On blue days you can bee paranoid that everyone is out to get you. This is not always such a bad thing. You feel frustrated and anxious, which can induce a nailbiting frenzy that can escalate into a triplechocolatemudcakeeating frenzy in a blink of an eye! On blue days you feel like you’re floating in an ocean of sadness. You’re about to burst into tears at any moment and you don’t even know why. Ultimately, you feel like you’re wandering through life without purpose. You’re not sure how much longer you can hang on, and you feel like shouting, “ Will someone please shoot me!” It doesn’t take much to bring on a blue day. You might just wake up not feeling or looking your best, find some new wrinkles, put on a little weight, or get a huge pimple on your nose. You could fet your date’s name or have an embarrassing photograph published. You might get dumped, divorced, or fired, make a fool of yourself in public, be afflicted with a demeaning nickname, or just have a plain old badhair day. Maybe work is a pain in the butt. You’re under major pressure to fill someone else’s shoes, your boss is picking on you, and everyone in the office is driving you crazy. You might have a splitting headache, or a slipped dish, bad breath, a toothache, chronic gas, dry lips, or a nasty ingrown toenail. Whatever the reason, you’re convinced that someone up there doesn’t like you. Oh what to do, what to do? The 50Percent Theory of Life I believe in the 50percent theory. Half the time things are better than normal。 and for this reason the significance of the experience in its relation to development ought to be sympathetically studied. The birth of the imagination and of the passions, the perception of the richness of life, and the consciousness of the possession of the power to master and use that wealth, create a critical moment in the history of youth, —a moment richer in possibilities of all kinds than es at any later period. Agitation and ferment of soul are inevitable in that wonderful moment. There are times when agitation is as normal as is selfcontrol at other and less critical times. The year of wandering is not a manifestation of aimlessness, but of aspiration, and that in its ferment and uncertainty youth is often guided to and finally prepared for its task. The Price of Perfection Gold may depreciate, stocks rise or fall, and business values change so as to leave the market in panic, but every man on the street or in the store knows that one value forever remains permanent, unvarying, and that is character. Every other asset may be swept away and success still achieved if this remains。s angels peal in our ears the choral hymns of Paradise. Science, art, literature, philosophy— all that man has thought, all that man has done, — the experience that has been bought with the sufferings of a hundred generations, — all are garnered up for us in the world of books. The Year of Wandering Between the preparation and the work, the apprenticeship and the actual dealing with a task or an art, there es, in the experience of many young men, a period of uncertainty and wandering which is often misunderstood and counted as time wasted, when it is, in fact, a period rich in full and free development. It is as natural for ardent and courageous youth to wish to know what is in life, what it means, and what it holds for its children, as for a child to reach for and search the things that surround and attract it. Behind every real worker in the world is a real man, and a man has a right to know the conditions under which he must live, and the choices of knowledge, power, and activity which are offered him. In the education of many men and women, therefore, there es the year of wandering。 I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who didn’t love reading.” Precious and priceless are the blessings which the books scatter around our daily paths. We walk, in imagination, with the noblest spirits, through the most solemn and charming regions. Without stirring from our firesides we may roam to the most remote regions of the earth, or soar into realms when Spenser39。 1 Book and Life Books are to mankind what memory is to the individual. They contain the history of our race, the discoveries we have made, the accumulated knowledge and experience of ages。 they picture for us the miracles and beauties of nature, help us in our difficulties, fort us in sorrow and in suffering, change hours of weariness into moments of delight, store our minds with ideas, fill them with good and happy thoughts, and lift us out of and above ourselves. Many of those who have had, as we say, all that this world can give, have yet told us they owed much of their pur