"Joyous Things, or Forty and Upwards" was written at a time when its author found himself standing midway on the bridge which spans the stream of life, and wondering whether the tide was still coming in or now beginning to run out. Mr. Sherman may not have intended this essay as a chapter of autobiography. He may rather have meant it as a chapter in everyman's biography—he himself being merely the "illustrator," working with such odd paints "as he happened to have in the house." He may wish us now to look upon it as an impersonal study of the problems that await every man when the ardent early years are over, and he pauses at forty to ask himself how much it has profited him to attain a measure of professional success, achieved at the cost of his youth and buoyancy, and a meas-
