Learning their
lesson, bearing their load is essential to deep, lasting happiness.

It is not the life of the butterfly experience that is firm, calm,
serene in times of storm and stress. It is the life that by loads of
care has been forced to strike its roots down to the rocks. There are
some lives that seem to run over with a happiness that is full of
refreshing to all who know them, and these have come out of great
tribulation.

At first the multiplication table is a burden; later, when mastered, it
becomes a wonderful bearer of burdens. To wear a careworn, fretful
look, to go through life shedding misery, is to confess that we have
not learned our lesson, that we are dunces in life's school.

The secret of happiness is in grasping the significance of living, to
learn that we live for things other and higher than those mad follies
and fading prizes for which men sell their bodies and souls and fret
out their nerves and hearts. No man can be happy whose heart is set on
the changing fashion of things or who looks for satisfaction in things.

The lover is happy because he has discovered his prize and is
enthralled by a pursuit that makes all other things seem mean and
paltry. Men are happy in proportion as they yield themselves to the
best, as they tune their hearts to strike the highest key of their
lives. Paul is happier in the dungeon, where he can be true to his
ideal, than Nero on the throne without one.

There is feast in days of famine for those who have the inner eyes for
the riches of life. You always can find in this world what your heart
is looking for. But you cannot satisfy your heart on everything you
may chance to find, and until the heart is satisfied and the deeper
needs of the life are met there is no happiness.

The search for happiness is not altogether selfish. Few things can we
do that will help others more than the cultivation of serene strength
and cheer in ourselves. Not the soulless, set smile, but the strength
and sympathy that flow from a life fixed in confidence in eternal right
and good and unfailing love.

THE FOLLY OF ANXIETY

The great Teacher does not say that we are not to be thoughtful, or
provident; but He insists that no event can be provided for by anxiety,
by fretting over it before it comes. Half the people on our streets
look as though life was a sorry business. It is hard to find a happy
looking man or woman. Worry is the cause of their woebegone
ap