Litchfield enquirer., 1877-10-11
Labor and Happiness.

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 for the sinner is often success; the blunderer, never But nature is not like theology. .pitiless; she always has her com pensations. If she gives her blunderers g hard life, she gives them an easy temper. Their heads are not shrewd at shifting of the burdens of existence here below, but their shoulders are made broad to bear them. The keen penetration that plans, the restless energy that brings things to pass, and the sleepless vigilance that nev- CT lets opportunity go by unimproved. sharpen the features and temper as well as the intellect; and many an able man ai the top of the ladder is unhappier in the midst of his successes, than the blunder- CT who lies at It's foot. overwhelmed with failure. Unlucky as he is. he sleeps nights, his forehead never wrinkles with care, he enjoys such scanty pleasures as happen within his reach. and, if he can only have steady work. and learn to enjoy it, he is happy man.
 No doubt, indeed, success tends to hap piness; unsuccess, to unhappiness; but, with success and largely conducive to it, grows the fatalest of all passions to hap piness, ambition. It is this passion that, more than stimulating climate, intensi- fies American life, and gives us the thin voices, wiry frames and care-worn faces satirized by foreigners. Every American child's story, every American Sunday School book, unconsciously stimulates ambition. The abundance of ..self-made men, i" and the marvellous successes thcy win among us, fire the blood and shake the nerves of the youngster. till he contin- uaIly over shoots his mark. He forsakes agriculture and crowds into the profess ions-always overstocked- into busi. ness, always overdone. Undoubtedly am- bition is an excellent thing. There is no progress without it; but it can never be happy. If the truth could be known, we believe it would be found that the Ameri- can is the most successful and the least happy of men. The possibilities of growth in such country as ours are so great that it's mere actualities fail to satisfy our people. In prosperous times they charge at the top of their speed at obstacles that seem insurmountable to the calm specta- tor. Many fall. but enough succeed to keep the fever of ambition always at full height throughout all ranks of society. In unprosperous times the Anne rican is a Napoleon at St. Helena. His stomach is so pampered with success that it cannot digest failure The able ambition that unpropitious circumstances have brought to grief is a sad sight; but the most por- tentous of all spectacles is the ambitious blunderer. Perhaps the blunderer is born ambitious like the rest of us, but happily continued i'll success cures him early in life. Now and then, however, there ar ises blunderer with an ambition that is unappeasable and an evil energy that is indefatigable. He ruins himself and all his relations, and all his wife's relations; for he has that boundless faith in himself which is contagious. Politics swarm with such blunderers, whose mere cunning passes for shlewdness, and to whose char acters supernatural selfshnsss lends an appearance of strength that is altogether deceptive.
 The surest road to happiness. though a very hard one to unaccustomed feet, is the love of work. That-sducation once accomplished, unsuccess has lost it's sting. The happiest people aro those Uho earn their own living; not too easily nor yet too hard. Rich men who are wise learn to work and to love work as though their. subsistence depended upon it; though their labor is apt to be shallow make believe that carries little of the satisfac. ton of the genuine article. True as the gospel of labor is, ,howeyer,its converts are by no means as many as one would sup pose. Men preach but do not practice 1t, and we al shlrk the work weshould be the better for performing It seems pretty evil dent that man isnot one of the industrious animals hy.natnre. Unlike the ant and the bee we find slo5h so easy and labor So hard that few of us ever learn to love work of any sort, especially of the sort we can do best. Supremely blest are they to whom labor is so habitual and so con- genial that it becomes positive pleas ure. In great matters the delights of suc- cessful labor are readily conceded. We love to picture to ourselves the glorious exaltation of Shakspere. or Michael Angelo, or Handel. reveling in the ex- ercise of creative genius. But these exal- tations imply their corresponding depres- sions, and VIC doubt whether Beethoven was ss happy with his genius as old Father Haydn in the calm. regular exercise of hls talent. Indeed 1t is not the snccess of the art, nor even the quality of it, that gives happiness, but the love of it. The tailor to whom the perfect fit of coat seemed work of inspiration was wiser
 man than Solomon, for in the enthusiastic
 love of his art he had discovered the SC.
 crst of happiness.