Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: n. PHILOSOPHY AND THE DAEMON. Philosophy, it has been said, is the art of bearing other people's troubles. The truest philosopher I ever heard of was a woman. She was brought into the London Hospital suffering from a poisoned leg. The house surgeon made a hurried examination. He was a man of blunt speech. "It will have to come off," he told her. "What, not all of it?" "The whole of it, I am sorry to say," growled the house surgeon. "Nothing else for it?" "No other chance for you whatever," explained the house surgeon. "Ah, well, thank Gawd it's not my 'ead," observed the lady. The poor have a great advantage over us better- off folk. Providence provides them with many opportunities for the practice of philosophy. I was present at a "high tea" given last winter by charitable folk to a party of char-women. After the tables were cleared we sought to amuse them. One young lady, who was proud of herself as a palmist, set out to study their "lines." At sight of the first toil- worn hand she took hold of her sympathetic face grew sad. "There is a great trouble coming to you," she informed the ancient dame. The placid-featured dame looked up and smiled: "What, only one, my dear?" "Yes, only one," asserted the kind fortune-teller, much pleased, "after that all goes smoothly." "Ah," murmured the old dame, quite cheerfully, "we was all of us a short-lived family." Our skins harden to the blows of Fate. I was lunching one Wednesday with a friend in the country. His son and heir, aged twelve, entered and took his seat at the table. "Well," said his father, "and how did we get on at school to-day?" "Oh, all right," answered the youngster, settling himself down to his dinner with evident appetite. "Nobody caned?" demanded his father, with— as...