Captivating as a 'born,' a fortuitous, untrained content may be, trained content is of a finer type. One is quantity content, the other quality content. Not to smash things up and make them over just as we want them, which we should like to do but cannot; not to waste our time fighting against conditions, but to take up those conditions, that environment, and out of them forge the œs triplex of a contented heart—that, I take it, is to be an adept in the fine art of living, and I for one am votary.
That the most restless heart can train itself to find content in simple, commonplace things, like work, nature, health, books, meditation, and friends,—illustrations are bewilderingly abundant. Burne-Jones said he would like to stay right in his own house for numberless years, the hope of getting on with his painting was happiness enough. Macaulay would 'rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading'; and King James said that if he were not a king he would be a university man, and if it were so that he must be a prisoner he would desire no other durance than to be chained in the Bodleian Library with so many noble authors. Carlyle's chief luxury was 'to think and smoke tobacco, with a new clay pipe every day, put on the doorstep at night for any poor brother-smoker or souvenir-hunter to carry away.'
All Diogenes wanted was that Alexander and his men should stand from between him and the sun. Goethe found content in Nature and earnest activity; and the happy Turk told Candide that he had twenty acres of land which he cultivated with his children, work which put them far from great evils: ennui, vice, and need,—'Il faut cultiver notre jardin.' Diocletian, one of the cleverest of the Roman emperors, reigned twenty-two years and then retired to private life in Dalmatia, building, planting, and gardening. Solicited by Maximian to resume the imperial purple, he replied that if he could show Maximian the cabbages which he had planted with his own hands he would no longer be urged to relinquish his enjoyment of happiness for the pursuit of power. Fanny Kemble lived all summer in the Alps, the guides describing her exquisitely as the lady who goes singing over the mountains. Pedaretus, being left out of the election of the three hundred, went home merry, saying that it did him good to find there were three hundred better than himself in the city. St. Augustine on his thirty-third birthday gave his friends a moderate feast followed by a three days' discussion of the Happy Life. Bunyan wrote The Pilgrim's Progress not to please his neighbors, but his own self to satisfy; in prison, too.
Catherine of Siena, whatever her sufferings, was always jocund, 'ever laughing in the Lord.' The blind Madame du Deffand rejoiced that her affliction was not rheumatism; Spurgeon's receipt for contentment was never to chew pills, but to swallow the disagreeable and have done with it; Darwin's comfort was that he had never consciously done anything to gain applause; and Jefferson never ceased affirming his belief in the satisfying power of common daylight, common pleasures, and all the common relations of life. Essipoff, when commiserated on the smallness of her hands, insisted that longer ones would be cumbersome. Robert Schauffler's specific for a blue Monday is to whistle all the Brahms tunes he can remember. Dr. Cuyler, when very ill, replied to a relative's suggestion of the glorious company waiting him above, 'I've got all eternity to visit with those old fellows; I am in no hurry to go'; and old Aunt Mandy, when asked why she was so constantly cheerful, replied, 'Lor', chile, I jes' wear this world like a loose garment.'
Acts, all these, the flinging out of hand or tongue against adverse fortune. The brain can do it, too. One of the most remarkable statements I ever heard is Mary Antin's that she never had a dull hour in her life. Now, outside things, doings, could not so have thrilled her days. Her spirit kept dullness distant. On the rafters of Montaigne's tower-room was written in Greek, 'It is not so much things that torment man as the opinion that he has of things.' Our opinions then make the contented or the discontented heart. Coleridge affirmed the shaping power of imagination to be so vitally human that the joy of life consists in it. Haydon's chief pleasure was 'feeding on his own thoughts.' 'Make for yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts,' Ruskin urged. 'Whether God gave the Venetians St. Mark's bones does not matter,' he says elsewhere, 'but he gave them real joy and peace in their imagined treasure, more than we have in our real ones.' Lord Rosebery urges people to garden in winter in the imagination. Stevenson writes of the ease and pleasure of travels in the calendar and a voyage in the atlas; and Keats thought that a man might pass a very pleasant life by reading certain pages of poetry and wandering with them and musing and dreaming upon them.
It is the mood that makes the contented heart, just as the eye makes the horizon, and we ourselves make the light that we see things by. Clothes warm us only by keeping our own heat in. 'Everyone is well or ill at ease,' says Epictetus, 'according as he finds himself; not he whom the world believes but himself believes to be so is content.' To be concrete, take riches. 'Greedy fools,' sings the modern poet,
| 'Measure themselves by poor men never; |
| Their standard being still richer men |
| Makes them poor ever.' |
The rich man is merely one who has something to spare; and the really poor one he who has nothing over. If you can give anything you are rich. Try it. An old man tells me how Mark Hopkins used to examine the boys in the Westminster Catechism: 'What is the chief end of man?' 'To glorify God and enjoy him forever.' 'Well,' he burst forth, 'why don't you do it then?' It is not conceit, but hygiene of the soul, to 'enjoy one's self,' taking the conventional phrase literally. The trick of happiness, says Walt Whitman, is to tone down your wants and tastes low enough; and Stevenson puts in his say that the true measure of success is appreciation: 'I stand more in need of a deeper sense of contentment with life than of knowledge of the Bulgarian tongue.' What would the possession of a thousand a year avail, asks Thackeray, to one who was allowed to enjoy it only with the condition of wearing a shoe with a couple of nails in it?
Take knowledge, not to be confounded with wisdom,—'I have none,' sang Keats's thrush, 'and yet the evening listens.' It did not hurt Horace
| if others be |
| More rich or better read than me, |
| Each has his place. |