(1345)
HAPPINESS FROM WITHIN
We think that if a certain event were to come to pass, if some rare good fortune should befall us, our stock of happiness would be permanently increased, but the chances are that it would not; after a time we should settle back to the old every-day level. We should get used to the new conditions, the new prosperity, and find life wearing essentially the same tints as before. Our pond is fed from hidden springs; happiness is from within, and outward circumstances have but little power over it.—John Habberton, The Chautauquan.
(1346)
HAPPINESS, IMPARTING
A poor man went into a wealthy merchant’s counting-house one day and saw piles of bank-notes which the clerks were busy in counting. The poor man thought of his desolate home, and the needs of his family, and, almost without thinking, he said to himself, “Ah! how happy a very little of that money would make me!” The merchant overheard him. “What is that you say, my friend?” The poor man was confused, and begged to be excused, as he did not intend to say anything. But the kind-hearted merchant wouldn’t excuse him, and so the man had to repeat what he had said. “Well,” said the merchant, “how much would it take to make you happy?” “Oh, I don’t know, sir,” said he, “but the weather is very cold, and I have no fuel; my wife and children are thinly clad, sir, for I have been sick. But we don’t want much. I think, sir, about fifteen dollars would get us all we need.” “John,” said the merchant to his clerk, “count this man out fifteen dollars.” The poor man’s heart was made glad, and when he got home, his family were made happy. At the close of the day, the clerk asked his employer how he should enter on his books the money given. He answered: “Say, ‘For making a man happy, fifteen dollars.’” Perhaps that was the happiest fifteen dollars the merchant himself had ever spent. (Text.)
(1347)
HAPPINESS, RULES FOR
Mrs. Alice Freeman Palmer was once talking to a girls’ club, composed of the unkempt and unprivileged daughters of Eve, and gave them three rules for happiness in the promise that they would keep the rules every day for a week. The rules were, for each day:
First—Commit to memory a worthy sentence.