sound
it up the brilliant stairway; flash it in chandeliers! Happiness,
indeed! Let us build on the centre of the parlor floor a throne to
Happiness; let all the guests, when they come in, bring their flowers
and pearls and diamonds, and throw them on this pyramid, and let it be
a throne; and then let Happiness, the Queen, mount the throne, and we
will stand around and, all chalices lifted, we will say: "Drink, O
Queen! live forever!"

LIGHTS OUT.

But the guests depart, the flutes are breathless, the last clash of
the impatient hoofs is heard in the distance, and the twain of the
household come back to see the Queen of Happiness on the throne amid
the parlor floor. But, alas! as they come back the flowers have faded,
the sweet odors have become the smell of a charnel-house, and instead
of the Queen of Happiness there sits there the gaunt form of Anguish,
with bitten lip and sunken eye, and ashes in her hair.

The romp and joyous step of the dancers who have left seems rumbling
yet, like jarring thunders that quake the floor and rattle the glasses
of the feast, rim to rim. The spilled wine on the floor turns into
blood. The wreaths of plush have become wriggling reptiles. Terrors
catch tangled in the canopy that overhangs the couch. A strong gust of
wind comes through the hall and the drawing-room and the bed-chamber,
in which all the lights go out. And from the lips of the wine-beakers
come the words: "Happiness is not in us!" And the arches respond: "It
is not in us!" And the silenced instruments of music, thrummed on by
invisible fingers, answer: "Happiness is not in us!" And the frozen
lips of Anguish break open, and, seated on the throne of wilted
flowers, she strikes her bony hands together, and groans: "It is not
in me!"

HAPPINESS IN POVERTY.

That very night a clerk with a salary of a thousand dollars a
year--only one thousand--goes to his home, set up three months ago,
just after the marriage-day. Love meets him at the door; love sits
with him at the table; love talks over the work of the day; love takes
down the Bible, and reads of Him who came our souls to save; and they
kneel, and while they are kneeling--right in that plain room, on that
plain carpet--the angels of God build a throne, not out of flowers
that perish and fade away, but out of garlands of heaven, wreath on
top of wreath, amaranth on amaranth, until the throne is done. Then
the harps of God sounded, and suddenly there appeared one w