A little boy said to his mother: “I couldn’t make sister happy nohow I could fix it. But I made myself happy trying to make her happy.” “I make Jim happy,” said another boy, speaking of his invalid brother. “He laughs and that makes me happy, and I laugh.” “To love and to be loved,” said Sydney Smith, “is the greatest happiness of existence.”
(1342)
HAPPINESS AS A GOD
Entomologists tell us that millions of insects, generations whose numbers must be counted by myriads, are born and die within the compass of one summer’s day. Perfected with the morning, they flutter through their sunny life; and the evening, when it turns its shadow upon the earth, becomes to their animated and tuneful being a universal grave. It is impossible to understand for what end this is done, unless we accept the happiness which these share, as a good in itself; a good so great, in the judgment of the Creator, and of those who look with Him on the creation, as to justify the expenditure of such wisdom and force on their delicate, harmonious, but ephemeral structure; and to make this structure illustrative of His glory.—Richard S. Storrs.
(1343)
HAPPINESS COMMUNICATED
In Los Angeles, when the rose festival comes, the child, going through the streets, breathes perfume, and for days the sweetness clings to the garments. And all good men exhale happiness as they pass through life.—N. D. Hillis.
(1344)
HAPPINESS, DEARTH OF
Lord Byron, who drank of every cup that earth could give him, and who had all the ministries of earth around him, with an intellectual and physical nature that could dive down into deepest depths and could soar to the highest heights, whose wings when spread could touch either pole, just before he died, sitting in a gay company, was meditative and moody. They looked at him and said, “Byron, what are you thinking so seriously about?” “Oh,” he said, “I was sitting here counting up the number of happy days I have had in this world. I can count but eleven, and I was wondering if I would ever make up the dozen in this world of tears and pangs and sorrows.” (Text.)—“Famous Stories of Sam P. Jones.”