lavish distribution of it for worthy
purposes. If he has preserved a remnant of conscience, this distribution
may give him much satisfaction, and justly increase his good opinion of
his own deserts; but the fallacy is in leaving out of account the sort of
man he has become in this sort of pursuit. Has he escaped that hardening
of the nature, that drying up of the sweet springs of sympathy, which
usually attend a long-continued selfish undertaking? Has either he or the
great politician or the great scholar cultivated the real sources of
enjoyment?

The pursuit of happiness! It is not strange that men call it an illusion.
But I am well satisfied that it is not the thing itself, but the pursuit,
that is an illusion. Instead of thinking of the pursuit, why not fix our
thoughts upon the moments, the hours, perhaps the days, of this divine
peace, this merriment of body and mind, that can be repeated and perhaps
indefinitely extended by the simplest of all means, namely, a disposition
to make the best of whatever comes to us? Perhaps the Latin poet was
right in saying that no man can count himself happy while in this life,
that is, in a continuous state of happiness; but as there is for the soul
no time save the conscious moment called "now," it is quite possible to
make that "now" a happy state of existence. The point I make is that we
should not habitually postpone that season of happiness to the future.

No one, I trust, wishes to cloud the dreams of youth, or to dispel by
excess of light what are called the illusions of hope. But why should the
boy be nurtured in the current notion that he is to be really happy only
when he has finished school, when he has got a business or profession by
which money can be made, when he has come to manhood? The girl also
dreams that for her happiness lies ahead, in that springtime when she is
crossing the line of womanhood,--all the poets make much of this,--when
she is married and learns the supreme lesson how to rule by obeying. It
is only when the girl and the boy look back upon the years of adolescence
that they realize how happy they might have been then if they had only
known they were happy, and did not need to go in pursuit of happiness.

The pitiful part of this inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness
is, however, that most men interpret it to mean the pursuit of wealth,
and strive for that always, postponing being happy until they get a
fortune, and if they are lucky in t