illustrated by the apparent contentment of people doomed to
hard labor in the most retired and dreary retreats. We wonder at their
placitude, as we travel in remote and obscure sections of the country. A
poor farmer, whose house is scarcely better than a hovel, surrounded
with chickens and pigs, and with only a small garden,--unadorned and
lonely and repulsive,--has no cravings which make the life of the
favored rich sometimes unendurable. The poorer he is, and therefore the
more miserable as we should think, the more contented he seems to be;
while a fashionable woman or _ennuied_ man, both accustomed to the
luxuries and follies of city life, with all its refinements and
gratification of intellectual and social pleasures, will sometimes pine
in a suburban home, with all the gilded glories of rich furniture,
books, beautiful gardens, greenhouses, luxurious living, horses,
carriages, and everything that wealth can furnish.

So that civilization would seem often a bitter mockery, showing that
intellectual life only stimulates the cravings of the soul, but does not
satisfy them. And when people are poor but cultivated, the unhappiness
seems to be still greater; demonstrating that cultivated intellect alone
opens to the mind the existence of evils which are intensified by the
difficulty of their removal, and on which the mind dwells with feelings
kindred to despair. I have sometimes doubted whether an obscure farmer's
daughter is any happier with her piano, and her piles of cheaply
illustrated literature and translations of French novels, and her
smatterings of science learned in normal schools, since she has learned
too often to despise her father and mother and brother, and her
uneducated rural beau, and all her surroundings, with poverty and unrest
and aspiration for society eating out her soul. The happiness produced
merely by intellectual pleasures and social frivolities is very small at
the best, compared with that produced by the virtues of the heart and
the affections kindled by deeds of devotion, or the duties which take
the mind from itself. Intellectual pleasures give only a brief
satisfaction, unless directed to a practical end, like the earnest
imparting of knowledge in educational pursuits, or the pursuit of art
for itself alone,--to create, and not to devour, as the epicure eats his
dinner. Where is the happiness of devouring books with no attempt to
profit by them, except in the temporary pleasure of satisfy