You cannot buy happiness, not permanently at any rate, although it may be that, like Rebecca West, you can buy a "solid block of it" in the shape of a holiday. But even then you can't be sure of your happiness. One of the holiday patty may fall il. Some minor mishap may overtake another—the loss of luggage anything that arouses tempora ary irritation—and off whisks happi-Rest, leaving only & henrtache beind.
There is a strange contrariness about happiness, inasmuch as. she who has everything to make her happy rarely Is happy, and she who has nothing is often the the happiest ofall, I believe Providence's way of compensating the poor and stricken for Inck of riches and of health is to endow them with the sift of happiness, with the ability of squeeze out of life the last last grain' of pleasure and amusement, The Creative Artist's Eestasy If at the pistol's point I were com led to say. who wore the happiest I should plump for creative rkers. The sculptor who by sheer ree of his genius translates a blob of clay into such a form as will stir emotion in the hearts of thousands is, in the hour of his supreme achievement, the happiest of men. The poet who, conceiving a vision of beauty, reveals through the medium of words that beauty unto the world even as he seos it is likewise an Olympian, All creative artists, however humble, have their moments of ecstasy when they tread the Milky Way and rub shoulders with the stars.
Yet conversely were I to declare whom T believe to be the most table of mortals, I would say. again creative artists. For the descent from the heights is 2 By the time shine left on the artist's shoulders, only wounds that show how hard the descent has been. of Bliss When I was a child, I believed implicitly that if you were good, you were happy. But that belief' was illed for ever when I was persuade into the performance of an unselfish action by an. unthinking relative who assured mo that the glow of happiness I would instantly experience would more than repay me for my good deed. I waited and walted for that glow, but it never came.' Only thereafter I regarded that relative as a cheat who had dangled before my eyes a reward that was not forthcoming.
No, sad as it is to admit, being good—good in the limited sense of the word—does not necessarily ensure happiness. If it did—heavens! how good we'd all try to be! As matter of fact, happiness has way of coming in patches.
Hours of bliss have a knack of snee jeds of bigckness. Plunged in jondency, we have just arrived the conclusion that for ever parted are the delights that used to thrill us, when some inner elation turns our bleak world into a glittering, sun-warmed globe whose spinning seems all too quick, so eager are we to anarch for our enjoyment. every second of the racing minutes, Only at such times when the liquid haze of twilight has cast a drifting melancholy over the Iandseape and '8 shrill wind chills our blood, do we panse to ask ourselves fearfully, will it last—this happiness: of ours? Or! are we building our high hopes on too frail a foundation? Are we cramming, a3 the phrase goes, all our eggs in one basket? Never mind, we retort gallantly. Let's sing! Let's be mad and glad while we can!
T believe the happiest people are those who have known much unhappiness; that the happiest people are those who have been most sorely rt
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.