THE BETTER SELF: ESSAYS FOR HOME-LIFE. BY HAIN FRISWELL, AUTHOR OF "THE GENTLE LIFE." The State, or Individual [or WRITER], thrives the best who dives BOD That which is nearest us touches us most. The passions rise HECH HENRY S. KING & Co., 65 CCRNHILL, AND 12 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON. 1875. 270. f. 466. THIS VOLUME IS WITH GREAT RESPECT AND BY PERMISSION DEDICATED TO THE BARONESS BURDETT-COUTTS, WHOSE CONSTANT AIM HAS BEEN TO HELP OTHERS TO ATTAIN A BETTER SELF. a 3 PREFACE. THIS book by no means concerns the best self or the highest ideal, but simply a move upwards towards something a little higher than the dead flat upon which we have, of late, settled. To those who live noble and high lives even in imagination, which is by far the most trodden path, the essays in this volume will seem but tame and homely. Is this, they will ask-this life of ordinary courtesy, simple and pure affection, and humdrum honesty-the better life? The answer is, Yes, it is; because pretence, sham, and disguise are as rife now as in the days when the Voice cried in the wilderness and pointed out the straight path, which was, even to the soldier-not desertion of his work nor brand-new |