Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1902-06-28
PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS.

The following is Miss Florence
Adams Grafton, delivered at the com
mencement exercises Of the w II. s..
June 10, 1902:
The appetite for happiness is instinc-
tive. like hunger and thirst, wise
provision of nature designed to incite
effort. There are people who. having
sought happiness, with long and earn
est effort, finally gave up the quest.
feeling that while it was possible for
them to live decently and honestly,
happy they could never be. 1t being
impossible to obtain in this world what
seemed indispensable to their happi-
ness, the only thing to do was to go
on living whether they liked it or not.
In contrast to these are the people who
enjoy an unbounded felicity and ac-
count for the same by saying that they
were born with a happy disposition.
1t makes great difference in ones
feelings about happiness whether he
accustoms himself to regard it as
luxury, like million dollars or a
yacht which some have and more do
not, or rs a comparatively indispensi
BILE endowment such as a nose, which
is reproach to be without.
Great spirits in all times have found
in discomfort spur to exalted endeav-
or Neither Columbus, Lincoln, nor
Carlyle were happy men, but they put
saddle and bride on their own depres-
sion and rode it under whip and spur
into immortality. Some things we
cannot get when we try directly for
them, but they fall to our lot if only
we try hard enough after something
else Make happiness n primary OBJ
ject and it leads one doubtful chase.
There are some stars we cannot see
when we look straight at them but
which become visible when we look
little to one side. so people who are
aiming for the particular lot of happi-
ness are counselled to aim little to
one side of the mark that their chance
Of the bulls eye may be greater.
There are many external Influences
which make or do not make happiness.
Some of these are under our control
and particularly those which have Il
physiological bearing. Happiness must
have health for its foundation. In the
widest sense happiness means health
and is but another word for health.
Over atmosphcrical causes of happiness
we can exercise no direct action, but at
the same time just as we can divert the
lightning from its fatal course we in
directly effect good,
1t is an objectionable folly to build
houses il, dark humid spots and thus
deprive ourselves and others of purity
of atmosphere which is an unquestion-
able AID to happiness. Children are
shut up in the closet rooms of close
I towns wnere atmospheric purity is
unknown, where cold and heat Cypress:
where physical strength is so impaired
that perfect body is not to be found;
where exhaustion from study or work
is the daily cross; where things and
objects of beauty are rare rs angel
visits; where variety is the dead mono
tony of unchanging scenes for the eve.
. w, a. a.
wonder is it that these children grow
/ peeyish, reckless, melancholy, rebel
/ lious and ready to run after any leader
who shall promise to take them to some
/ happier sphere? The wonder is how
| human nature can stand such famine
of happiness, The sanitarian should
begin to study how much happiness
can he secured by removing danger;
what bearing human habitations and
reereations have upon happiness.
/ Let ms add Il suggestion to our phil
aathropic friends. Establish gynasi-
ums for physical culture, cndow amuse-
ment and domestic science chairs. So
/ far we fear beuevolence has been too
exclusively devoted to the hospital and
asylum side of society or when they
have pushed beyond the limits of by
giene and sanitary regulations have
been too ready to stop with establish
/ ing libraries.
Let us do no less for the sick people
and the bad people, but in the name of
all that is human let us have a larger
thought for the physical training that
Shall help to keep our boys and girls
from reaching the hospitals, asylums
and reform schools and shall tit them
for the fuller enjoyment OF living.