Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period or other, when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own.

Past opportunities are gone, future are to come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured with age.

Let our happiness, therefore, be a modest mansion, which we can inhabit, while we have our health and vigour to enjoy it; not a fabric so vast and extensive that it has cost us the best part of our lives to build it, and which we can expect to occupy only when we have less occasion for a habitation than the tomb. It has been well observed, that we should treat futurity as an aged friend, from whom we expect a rich legacy. Let us do nothing to forfeit his esteem, and treat him with respect, not with servility.

But let us not be too prodigal when we are young, nor too parsimonious when we are old, otherwise we shall fall into the common error of those who, when they had the power to enjoy, had not the prudence to acquire; and when they had the prudence to acquire, had no longer the power to enjoy.