And I shall have quite enough to do, for mathematics, the sciences,
and the arts and crafts all lie ahead of me in my programme. I
plainly see that I have played my last game of tiddledywinks and
solitaire. But I'll have fun anyhow. If I gain a half-year in each
twelve-month as I have my programme mapped out, in seventy years I
shall have a net gain of thirty-five years. Then, when Atropos comes
along with her scissors to snip the thread, thinking I have reached
my threescore and ten, I shall laugh in her face and let her know,
between laughs, that I am really one hundred and five, and have
played a thirty-five-year joke on her. Then I shall quote Bacon at
her to clinch the joke: "A man may be young in years but old in hours
if he have lost no time."
CHAPTER XXX
FOUR-LEAF CLOVER
I have no ambition to become either a cynic, a pessimist, or an
iconoclast. To aspire in either of these directions is bad for the
digestion, and good digestion is the foundation and source of much
that is desirable in human affairs.
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