Just before the First World War destroyed a generation and divided Europe for almost a century, a farmer in a remote part of Aberdeenshire sat down at the age forty-three to write his thoughts on how to live a good life. Mitchell had a clear, fresh and effective prose style in Standard English, and was well placed to record the values of his time and his individual take on them. His is now a voice from the past that demands our attention, not necessarily to emulate it but to encourage us to consider what we have lost and what we have gained. The main casualty of the coming war would be an optimism we have never properly regained.

From "The Art of Living"

“We are all sent into this world for a purpose. To be useful in some way or other; to occupy our time in some sort of service not only as a means of gaining a livelihood for ourselves, if we have to work for a livelihood, but in this way contributing in some form or other to the good and the welfare of our fellowmen.

"Those who are sometimes spoken of as the idle rich and are free from the necessity of work should not spend their time and means in seeking merely their own pleasure. They ought to find a means of being useful in the way of providing work for others, or of spending the large store of the world’s riches which have fallen to them, so as to make others, less blessed in this way, happier and better.

"A life that is not useful in some way and does not help others in some fashion, is a wasted life. …

"In the discharge of our daily work we ought to realise that we are not only labouring for our own profit and those who may be dependent upon us, but for the common weal.”

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