The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1876-09-22
Happiness.

"Happiness," says the humorist, "is
to be found only in the dictionary" and
most of us are perhaps disposed to agree
with him, though there are few who
agree respecting the nature of the arti-
Gle; yet to the greater number, no doubt,
it is the good Just beyond our grasp.
"What is the world worth ?-I cannot
reach my rose" 1t is the distance that
allures and lends enchantment to the
desired object, which, if once secured,
we might find no more conducive to
happiness than those things already
within our hold. To the child, it is in
finite holidays and spendiug-money and
the Punishment of lessons; to the youth,
it is fame, the power to dazzle the world,
success in love; to the mdddle-aged, it is
an assured income, immunity from gOut
or asthma as well as from debt; to the
old, it is a fair port, and the hope of
heaven and reunion. Happiness natu-
rally does not consist in any of these
temporal things, as we speedily find
when they become ours. When the
child has outgrown his lessons and hOl-
idays, the youth is still pursuing the
chimera, surprised at every stage that
his pretty bubbles are hollow, that,
though love smiled,
"The gay enchantment was undone.
A gentle wife, but fairy none;"
and as he advances toward middle life,
the certain income, the freedom from
ills to which flesh is heir, do not quite
fulfill his expectations, and he begins to
look regretfully over his shoulder, and
suspect that youth was the angel he en-
tertained unawares, till he stumbles
into the wisdom of the slippered panta-
| looms, and lives only in the passing day.
Since happiness is state rather than an
estate,
"Flee from the gods that from thee hee,"
the wise man advises.
Seek nothing; fortune seeketh thee.
| Nor mount, nor dive; all good things keep
The midway of the eternal deep"
We had best not struggle too desper-
ately for happiness, it seems, cropping
after it with our blind wills; the objects
we desire will never give it to US, be-
cause in most cases it is already latent
in our present condition. Adolphus
thought it would be heaven on earth
to marry Lucretia and live in fiat; but
presently he began to discover that hap
piness is not one event alone, but the
fortunate conspiracy of many. Lucretia
was certain that happiness would be
complete if somebody would leave her a
legacy; but when that came to pass, she
fell to making herself miserable over in
vestments, and the watering Of stock,
and corruption in corporations, without
getting any nearer to the promised land.
"When remember all the happiness of
my life,n says Alphonse Karr, 81 find
there is scarcely one 1 had anticipated
that l secured in the end. Every hap
piness l can recall, l neither pursued
long nor sought for; they have shot up
and blossOmed under my feet like the
daisies" And is not this the experience
of each of us? The things we count
upon do not arrive at all, or they come
at the wrong time, in the wrong way,
and do not fill the niche appointed for
them. BY meditating too long upon an
expected happiness, we perhaps mag
: nifty its capacities; and when we finally
behold it face to face, 1t does not answer
to the picture in our mind-it may be
because we are greater than our happen
ings. Later in life We sometimes learn
that the disappOintments which gave
us wakefuI nights and woful days were
really happiness in disguise, ''fOr hap
piness," says some one, sis composed of
+ the evils we have escaped"
Probably the search for a positively
happy man or woman would be as fruit
= less DIS blldb VI DlOACuSoi BdAbAJ OCSehhSC
we refuse to believe that
; "Every common day which comes,
Hath hidden beauty on It's WINGS"
partly from the nature of things, and
the knowledge that life is transitory,
and that presently we shall be called
upon to surrender, at least for while,
r the treasures that compose our happi-
ness here. Is not this the skeleton
F haunting the fre-side and the board Oi
f the happy wife and mother?
After all, perhaps the sum of our hap
piness is greater than we credit our.
selves with at certain despairing mo-
ments, if there were any human arith.
!, metic which could calculate it; but it il
of such a brittle nature that an unbe
~. coming bonnet, an unkind word, sus
u picion, may shatter it-so immorta
i that a glance, a smile, even a tear, may
recreate it. Who has not felt the pOwe
+ to engeuder happiness that resides il
! the starry sky, in the white splendOr o
, the storm, in the serene afternoon, o
# the golden morning hours? Cheap,
o you will, but
, "All the real godsends are
> Common the daily dew"
:. Who has sat through symphony o
% oratorio unguickened by it? Has no
the touch of a child's hand, the music o
J, a chiId's voice, given US the most per
feet happiness? Has not the power t.
% make Immortal poems, the power Il
4 feed the hungry and clothe the naked
If or the power simply to please, conferred
= the blessing? Is not the girl happy il
+ her blushing beauty, and the boy in hi
u muscular Christianity? Is not worl
= itself divine in it's capacity to invok
n happiness ? And do not the mere pos
- sbilities of the narrowest life furnisl
"a it ?-for is not the kingdom of heavel
N within US?
W