Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it, but likely enough it is gone the moment we say to ourselves, “Here it is!” like the chest of gold that treasure-seekers find.... There is something more awful in happiness than in sorrow,—the latter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble at it.—Nathaniel Hawthorne.
IN STREET AND GRAND-STAND.
Familiar Sounds That Enter the Windows of City Flats and Put Sleep to Flight, or, on Baseball Fields, Cause the Voice of the Umpire to Seem Like a Penny Whistle in a Company of Fog-horns.
THE OLD HAND-ORGAN.
By W. D. Nesbit.
The old hand-organ in the street
Has not the gaudy gold and gilt
The new ones have—but, oh, the sweet
Old tunes it plays with limping lilt!
“The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls,”