"But beyond that it ought to have no power of conferring happiness, and certainly cannot drive away sorrow. Not though you build palaces out into the deep, can that help you. You read your Horace, I hope. 'Scandunt eodum quo dominus minæ.'"
"I recollect that," said Gerald. "Black care sits behind the horseman."
"Even though he have a groom riding after him beautiful with exquisite boots. As far as I have been able to look out into the world—"
"I suppose you know it as well as anybody," said Silverbridge,—who was simply desirous of making himself pleasant to the "dear old governor."
"As far as my experience goes, the happiest man is he who, being above the troubles which money brings, has his hands the fullest of work. If I were to name the class of men whose lives are spent with the most thorough enjoyment, I think I should name that of barristers who are in large practice and also in Parliament."
"Isn't it a great grind, sir?" asked Silverbridge.
"A very great grind, as you call it. And there may be the grind and not the success. But—" He had now got up from his seat at the table and was standing with his back against the chimney-piece, and as he went on with his lecture,—as the word "But" came from his lips—he struck the fingers of one hand lightly on the palm of the other as he had been known to do at some happy flight of oratory in the House of Commons. "But it is the grind that makes the happiness. To feel that your hours are filled to overflowing, that you can barely steal minutes enough for sleep, that the welfare of many is entrusted to you, that the world looks on and approves, that some good is always being done to others,—above all things some good to your country;—that is happiness. For myself I can conceive none other."
"Books," suggested Gerald, as he put the last morsel of the last kidney into his mouth.
"Yes, books! Cicero and Ovid have told us that to literature only could they look for consolation in their banishment. But then they speak of a remedy for sorrow, not of a source of joy. No young man should dare to neglect literature. At some period of his life he will surely need consolation. And he may be certain that should he live to be an old man, there will be none other,—except religion. But for that feeling of self-contentment, which creates happiness—hard work, and hard work alone, can give it to you."
"Books are hard work themselves sometimes," said Gerald.