being alive. They add directly to the sum of human happiness. They add to the goodness of life. Theirs is perhaps the rarest and most precious form of service, the most beautiful of vocations.
Next to those who hearten us by their natural gusto and their capacity for communicating whatever of sweetness they find in the taste of their own days, I would place in one class all those who do anything whatever excellently well. In formal ethical treatises we arrange the members of this class in a severe hierarchy with high places reserved for those who have held positions of political responsibility or who have attained eminence in science and the arts. But we are not very realistic in our ethical treatises. Outside the book, we find a different system of rating. In the frank unconventional judgment of the street, and in the tribunal of our own hearts we find a curious equality of gratitude and admiration for the best preacher and the best prize fighter, the chess champion and the prime minister, the successor of Newton and the world's supreme tenor, the man who has written the outstanding novel of the year, and the baker who makes the best Parker House rolls in town. Perhaps we even go so far as to number among the ninety-nine worthies of the
