The voyager entering a new country will listen with attention to the
traveller who is just returning from its exploration; and the young
warrior buckling on his armour may be benefited by the experiences
of the old warrior who is laying his armour off. I have climbed the
Hill of Life, and am past the summit, _I suppose_, and perhaps it
may help those just venturing the first incline to know what I think
I would do if I had it to do over.
I have lived an average life. I have had the same kind of follies,
fears, and fires my twenty-one-year-old reader has. I have failed
often and bitterly. I have loved and hated, lost and won, done some
good deeds and many bad ones. I have had some measure of success and
I have made about every kind of mistake there is to make. In other
words, I have lived a full, active, human life, and have got thus
far safely along.
I am on the shady side of fifty. As people grow old they accumulate
two kinds of spiritual supplies: one, a pile of doubts,
questionings, and mysteries; and the other, a much smaller pile of
positive conclusions. There is a great temptation to expatiate upon
the former subjects, for negative and critical statements have a
seductive appearance of depth and much more of a flavour of wisdom
than clear and succinct declarations. But I will endeavour to resist
this temptation, and will set down, as concisely as I can, some of
the positive convictions I have gained.
For the sake of orderly thought, I will make Ten Points. They might
of course just as well be six points or forty, but ten seems to be
the number most easily remembered, since we have ten fingers, first
and "handiest" of counters.
21
I