Life is a great struggle against gloom, and we could fight it better if we always remembered that happiness is a condition of heart and is not dependent on outward conditions. The kingdom of heaven is within you. Everything depends on the point of view.
Two prisoners looked out once through the bars,
One saw the mud, the other saw the stars.
Looking into the sky one sees the dark clouds and foretells rain, and the picnic spoiled; another sees the rift of blue and foretells fine weather. Looking out on life, one sees only its sad grayness; another sees the thread of gold, "which sometimes in the patterns shows most sweet where there are somber colors"! Happiness is a condition, and if you are not happy now, you had better be alarmed about yourself, for you may never be.
There was a woman who came with her family to the prairie country thirty-five years ago. They built a house, which in those days of sod roofs and Red-River frames seemed quite palatial, for had it not a "parlor" and a pantry and three bedrooms? The lady grieved and mourned incessantly because it had no back-stairs. In ten years they built another house, and it had everything, back-stairs, dumb-waiter, and laundry shoot, and all the neighbors wondered if the lady would be happy then. She wasn't. She wanted to live in the city. She had the good house now and that part of her discontent was closed down, so it broke out in another place. She hated the country. By diligently keeping at it, she induced her husband to go to the city where the poor man was about as much at home as a sailor at a dry-farming congress. He made no complaint, however. The complaint department was always busy! She suddenly discovered that a Western city was not what she wanted. It was "down East." So they went. They bought a beautiful home in the orchard country in Ontario, and her old neighbors watched development. Surely she had found peace at last—but she hadn't. She did not like the people—she missed the friendliness of the new country; also she objected to the winters, and her dining-room was dark, and the linen closet was small. Soon after moving to Ontario she died, and we presume went to heaven. It does not matter where she went—she won't like it, anyway. She had the habit of discontent.
There's no use looking ahead for happiness—look around! If it is anywhere, it is here.
"I am going out to bring in some apples to eat," said a farmer to his wife.
"Mind you bring in the spotted ones," said she who had a frugal mind.
"What'll I do if there are no spotted ones?" he asked.
"Don't bring any—just wait until they do spot!"
Too many people do not eat their apples until they are spotted.