freshness of innocence shrinks from
the very idea of impurity, the very suggestion of it, as if it were sin
to have even thought or heard of it, as if even the shadow of the evil
would leave some soil on the unsullied whiteness of the virgin mind.
"When modesty is once extinguished, it knows not a return."

CHAPTER L

THE HABIT OF HAPPINESS

The highest happiness must always come from the exercise of the best
thing in us.

When you find happiness in anything but useful work, you will be the
first man or woman to make the discovery.

If you take an inventory of yourself at the very outset of your career
you will find that you think you are going to find happiness in things
or in conditions. Most people think they are going to find the largest
part of their happiness in money, what money will buy or what it will
give them in the way of power, influence, comforts, luxuries. They
think they are going to find a great deal of their happiness in
marriage. How quickly they find that the best happiness they will ever
know is that which must be limited to their own capacity for enjoyment,
that their happiness can not come from anything outside of them but
must be developed from within. Many people believe they are going to
find much of their happiness in books, in travel, in leisure, in
freedom from the thousand and one anxieties and cares and worries of
business; but the moment they get in the position where they thought
they would have freedom many other things come up in their minds and
cut off much of the expected joy. When they get money and leisure they
often find that they are growing selfish, which cuts off a lot of their
happiness. No man able to work can be idle without feeling a sense of
guilt at not doing his part in the world, for every time he sees the
poor laboring people who are working for him, who are working
everywhere, he is constantly reminded of his meanness in shifting upon
others what he is able to do and ought to do himself. Idleness is the
last place to look for happiness. Idleness is like a stagnant pool.
The moment the water ceases to flow, to work, to do something, all
sorts of vermin and hideous creatures develop in it. It becomes torpid
and unhealthy giving out miasma and repulsive odors. In the same way
work is the only thing that will keep the individual healthy and
wholesome and clean. An idle brain very quickly breeds impurities.

The married man quickly learns that his