"Then welcome each rebuff that turns earth's smoothness rough" is all very well for a. motto to hang; on the wall, or to sing about, but for real, practical, everyday use—well there ave other sentiments more comfortable. My personal preference is all along the lines of those cheery little insincerities such as "Build a little fence of trust around to-day," or "The best is for you," or "I am all that one could ever wish to be.'' But just as you know that the most unexciting breakfast foods are invariably the mot nutritious and the bitterest tonics the most efficacious, so you realize that you must be "stabbed broad awake" at times, no matter how disagreeable the process.
"Keeping on the sunny side," and looking for the "good in the worst of us" become almost a passion in; these amiable days until we have; become as adroit in dodging the disagreeable truth as we are in evading shroffs or unwelcome callers. In an encouraging and reassuring lecture I once heard the advice given to "consider your best self as your real self," which sounds; plausible enough. Consequently I: treasure carefully the memory of an i occasion when I offered a starving picnicker the last pate de fois gras sandwich and smiled heroically as it disappeared. I did want that sandwich. I did press it upon an-j other. I did wear a blithe smile} over an aching—well, let's say; heart. Lrgo, 1 am a cheerful giver, no matter how many times since! then I have eaten the last chocolate in the box.
In the same way I preserve my most flattering photographs and; regard truthful snapshots as crude, caricatures. And—now we are! coming to the real heart of things—I get weighed on the hottest day of summer, in the thingest clothes compatible with conventional standards, and before tiffin. Theo I accept that as my standard weight and quote it from season to season. The chill suggestion that we are taking on weight under a no-exer-! cise-two-teas-threo-meais-and-a-mid-hight-snack regimen. is dismissed with the. thought that the last time; of weighing the returns were satis factory. i Solicitous hostesses, kindhearted though unveracious friends combine to preserve this sweet illusion. are so blind as those who wei what the looking glass tells them.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.