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Show FISHERMAN'S LUCK be ambitious or jealous or resentful; not to feel envious of anybody; not to fret about to-day nor worry about to-morrow,-that is the way we ought all to feel at some time in our lives; and that is the kind of indolence in which our brook faithfully encouraged us. 'T is an age in which such encouragement is greatly needed. We have fallen so much into the habit of being always busy that we know not how nor when to break it off with firmness. Our business tags after us into the midst of our pleasures, and we are ill at case beyond reach of the telegraph and the daily newspaper. We agitate ourselves amazingly about a multitude of affairs,-the politics of Europe, the state of the weather all around the globe, the marriages and festivities of very rich people, and the latest novelties in crime, none of which are of vital interest to us. The more earnest souls among us are cultivating a vicious tendency to Summer Schools, and Seaside Institutes of Philosophy, and Mountaintop Seminaries of Modern Languages. We toil assiduously to cram something more into ~~4 A LAZY, I DLE BROOK those scrap-bags of knowledge which we fondly call our minds. Seldom do we rest tranquil long enough to find out whether there is anything in them already that is of real value,-any native feeling, any original thought, which would like to come out and sun itself for a while in quiet. For my part, I am sure that I stand more in need of a deeper sense of contentment with life than of a knowledge of the Bulgarian tongue, and that all the paradoxes of Hegel would not do me so much good as one hour of vital sympathy with the careless play of children. The Marquis du Paty de I'Huitre may espouse the daughter and heiress of the Honourable James Bulger with all imaginable pomp, if he will. ya ne m'intrigue point du tout. I would rather stretch myself out on the grass and watch yonder pair of kingbirds carrying luscious flies to their young ones in the nest, or chasing away the marauding crow with shrill cries of anger. What a pretty battle it is, and in a good cause, too! Waste no pity on that big black ruffian. He is a villain and a thief, an egg-stealer, an ogre, a ~~5 |