as
under surroundings of discomfort and squalor such as I never before or
since experienced. Those surroundings were certainly not in themselves
productive of happiness; but neither did they detract from it. The
pathos of the situation is that we all desire happiness--it is merely
priggish to pretend that it is otherwise--and that we do not know in
the least how to attain it. Some few people go straight for it and
reach it; some people find it by turning their back upon what they most
desire, and walking in the opposite direction. I had a friend once who
made up his mind that to be happy he must make a fortune. He went
through absurd privations and endured intolerable labours; he did make
a fortune, and retired upon it at an early age, and immediately became
a thoroughly unhappy man, having lost all power of enjoying or
employing his leisure, and finding himself hopelessly and irremediably
bored. Of course, boredom is the surest source of unhappiness, but
boredom is not the result of the things we do or avoid doing, but some
inner weariness of spirit, which imports itself into occupation and
leisure alike, if it is there. There is no nostrum, no receipt for
taking it away. A kindly adviser will say to a bored man, "All this
discontent comes from thinking too much about yourself; if only you
would throw yourself a little into the lives and problems of others, it
would all disappear!" Of course it would! But it is just what the bored
man cannot do; and the advice is just as practical as to say
encouragingly to a man suffering from toothache, "If the pain would
only go away, you would soon be well." Ruskin was once consulted by an
anxious person, who complained that he was unhappy, and said that he
attributed it to the fact that he was so useless. Ruskin replied with
trenchant good sense: "It is your duty to try to be innocently happy
first, and useful afterwards if you can."

What, then, can we do in the matter? How are we to secure happiness?
The answer is that we cannot; that we must take it as it comes, like
the sunshine and the spring. Few of us are in a position to alter at a
moment's notice the course of our lives. It is more or less laid down
for us what paths we have to tread, and in whose company. We can to a
certain extent, taught by grim experience of the habits, thoughts,
tempers, passions, anticipations, retrospects, that disturb our
tranquillity, avoid occasions of stumbling. We can undertake small
responsi