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The predicament in which my friend Bagster finds himself is a very common one.  It is no longer true that the good die young; they become prematurely middle-aged.  In these days conscience doth make neurasthenics of us all.  Now it will not do to flout conscience, and by shutting our eyes to the urgencies and complexities of life purchase for ourselves a selfish calm.  Neither do we like the idea of neurasthenia.

My notion is that the twentieth-century man is morally solvent, though he is temporarily embarrassed.  He will find himself if he is given sufficient time.  In the mean time it is well for him to consider the nature of his embarrassment.  He has discovered that the world is “so full of a number of things,” and he is disappointed that he is not as “happy as kings”—­that is, as kings in the fairy books.  Perhaps “sure enough” kings are not as happy as the fairy-book royalties, and perhaps the modern man is only experiencing the anxieties that belong to his new sovereignty over the world.

There are tribes which become confused when they try to keep in mind more than three or four numbers.  It is the same kind of confusion which comes when we try to look out for more than Number One.  We mean well, but we have not the facilities for doing it easily.  In fact, we are not so civilized as we sometimes think.

For example, we have never carried out to its full extent the most important invention that mankind has ever made—­money.  Money is a device for simplifying life by providing a means of measuring our desires, and gratifying a number of them without confusion.

Money is a measure, not of commodities, but of states of mind.  The man in the street expresses a profound philosophy when he says, “I feel like thirty cents.”  That is all that “thirty cents” means.  It is a certain amount of feeling.

You see an article marked “$1.50.”  You pass by unmoved.  The next day you see it on the bargain counter marked “98 cents,” and you say, “Come to my arms,” and carry it home.  You did not feel like a dollar and a half toward it, but you did feel exactly like ninety-eight cents.

It is because of this wonderful measure of value that we are able to deal with a multitude of diverse articles without mental confusion.

I am asked to stop at the department store and discover in that vast aggregation of goods a skein of silk of a specified shade, and having found it bring it safely home.  Now, I am not fitted for such an adventure.  Left to my own devices I should be helpless.

But the way is made easy for me.  The floorwalker meets me graciously, and without chiding me for not buying the things I do not want, directs me to the one thing which would gratify my modest desire.  I find myself in a little place devoted to silk thread, and with no other articles to molest me or make me afraid.  The world of commodities is simplified to fit my understanding.  I feel all the gratitude of the shorn lamb for the tempered wind.