The Pursuit of Happiness is but concentrated phraseology for the purposes and endeavors of every human being. May you early learn to distinguish between the false and the true, between pleasure and happiness, early know your duty to yourselves, your country, and your God!
I will but add to these crude, but heart-engendered, observations, a few lines, embodying my own sentiments, and in a form much more impressive than I can command:—
"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best."
I have somewhere met with a little bagatelle, somewhat like this:—
Apollo, the god of love, of music, and of eloquence, weary of the changeless brilliancy of Olympus, determined to descend to earth, and to secure maintenance and fame, in the guise of a mortal, by authorship. Accordingly, the incognito divinity established himself in an attic, after the usual fashion of the sons of genius, and commenced inditing a poem—a long epic poem, plying his pen with the patient industry inspired by necessity, the best stimulus of human effort. At length, the task of the god completed, he, with great difficulty, procured the means of offering it to the world in printed form. The Epic of Apollo, the god of Poetry, fell, pre-doomed, from the press. No commendatory review had been secured, no fashionable publisher endorsed its merits. Disgusted with the pursuit of the wealth and honors of earth, Apollo returned to Olympus, bequeathing to mortals, this advice:—"Would you secure earthly celebrity and riches, do not attempt intellectual and moral culture, but INVENT A PILL!"
Instances of the successful pursuit of knowledge under difficulties frequently present themselves in our contemporaneous history, both in our own country and in foreign lands. Indeed, the history of the human mind goes far toward proving that, not the pampered scions of rank and luxury, but the hardy sons of poverty and toil, have been, most frequently, the benefactors of the race. Well has the poet said:—
"The busy world shoves angrily aside
The man who stands with arms a-kimbo set,
Until occasion tell him what to do;
And he who waits to have his task marked out,
Shall die, and leave his errand unfulfilled."
The Learned Blacksmith, as he is popularly called, acquired thirty, or more, different languages, while daily working at his laborious trade. He was accustomed to study while taking his meals, and to have an open book placed upon the anvil, while he worked. A celebrated physiological writer, alluding to the habits of this persevering devotee of philology, says, that nothing but his uninterrupted practice of his Vulcan-tasks preserved his health under the vast amount of mental labor he imposed upon himself.