Easter

"I wonder if it is possible to do too much," said Dick, rousing himself,
with manifest languor. "It's only the way he does it that plays a man
out. Here's Ellery, now, who works like a galley slave and looks as
fresh as the proverbial daisy."

"Well, come, you are criticizing yourself even more severely," Mr. Lenox
said. "You'll have to learn the secret, Dick, of letting your arms and
legs and brain work for you, while your inner man remains at peace.
That's the only way an American man can live in these hustling days; and
if you don't master it, the young men will come in and carry you out by
the time that you are fifty."

"And there are worse things than that," rejoined Dick. "I suppose it is
the universal experience that when one gets out of the freedom of
extreme youth and settles down to the jog-trot, harnessed life, the way
looks rather long and monotonous. A fellow can't help feeling tired to
think how tired he'll be before he gets to the end. To-night I feel as
old and dry as a mummy. If you touch me, I'll crumble."

"Mrs. Lenox and I have been longer in the game than you, Dick," answered
his host whimsically. "We are getting dangerously near the equator; and
we do not find ourselves exhausted. On the contrary, I rather think the
scenery improves, in some respects, as we go along."

"You are hardly capable of measuring the common fate. You have had the
touchstone of success, and the world has opened up before you. But what
depress me and impress me are the sodden people whom I meet by the
hundred; and I can't help reading my fate in the light of theirs. There
are such millions of us, obscure and uncounted except on the census."