“And fear not lest Existence, closing your
    Account and mine, should know the like no more;
    The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour’d
    Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.”

Or,

    “When You and I behind the Veil are passed,
    Oh! but the long, long while the World shall last,
    Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
    As the sea’s self should heed a pebble cast.”

Then you will come back to your work and see things in their proper dimensions.  You will expend your energy on things that require it, and you will smile at the things that do not deserve your attention, and pass them by.  You will substitute duty for ambition, and you will go your way with sanity for perhaps ten months.  Then you will need again the elemental lesson of the forest, the mountain, or the sea.

I do not mean that you shall take a vacation until you have deserved it.  What right have you to rest before you have labored—­before you have earned a thread that clothes you or a mouthful that nourishes you.  There are men whose whole lives are a vacation.  These words are not for them.  From my viewpoint, such men might as well be dead.  The men upon whom I am urging the wisdom of taking periods for recuperation are those who have been pulling with the team and keeping their traces taut.  And I assume that you who read are one of these worth-while men.  Very well!  I want you to last a long time.

On this subject, many is the talk I have had with friends who are business men.  “Well,” my business friend has said, “I just cannot get away this summer.  Next summer I will go away, but I cannot go away this summer.  You see, I have a ‘deal’ which I am about to close; it demands my personal attention.  It would be treason to my business to leave this summer.”

Yes, quite true, no doubt.  But so has Nature a “deal” on with this same business man; and it will be treason to Nature if he does not go away and let Nature’s ministers attend him.  If he has got to be false to his business or to Nature, he had better be false to the former.  It is a fine thing to be true to one’s business.  But be sure that you are really true to your business; and that means that, first of all, you shall look to your health.  Your business demands that.  Good health is good “business.”

I knew a business man who was so true to his business that he was unfaithful to himself.  The machinery of his superb mind had been running at highest speed for ten months.  It needed a rest—­oil on the heated bearings, a reburnishing of the soiled steel, a rest from the high tension.  He would have given just such care to an automobile, or an engine, or any inanimate mechanism.  He would have given much greater care to his horse.

But did he give it to himself?  No.  He had a “deal” on of large proportions; that “deal” must be consummated before attending to the mind and body that put it through.  So the lever was pulled back another notch; the machine was driven to its highest burst of speed and power, and the “deal” was a success.