“Are you happy?”
It had not occurred to me for some time whether I was happy or not, so I replied:
“I don't know; why do you ask?”
He looked at me in a questioning, and I thought rather indignant, way.
“Why shouldn't a man be happy?” I pressed him.
“Why should he be? Answer me that!” he responded, “Why should he be? Look at the world!”
With that he passed onward with a kind of crushing dignity.
I have laughed since when I have recalled the tone of his voice as he said, “Look at the world!” Gloomy and black it was. It evidently made him indignant to be here.
But at the moment his bitter query, the essential attitude of spirit which lay behind it, struck into me with a poignancy that stopped me where I stood. Was I, then, all wrong about the world? I actually had a kind of fear lest when I should look up again I should find the earth grown wan and bleak and unfriendly, so that I should no longer desire it.
“Look at the world!” I said aloud.