Part 32

It has been written that "he who toys with time trifles with a frozen serpent, which afterwards turns upon the hand which indulged the sport, and inflicts a deadly wound." There are many persons who sadly realize this in their own lives. When age with its frosts of years has come their reflections can not be otherwise than of the saddest kind as they ponder over wasted time, the hours they spent in a worse than foolish manner. Death often touches with a terrible emphasis the value of time. But, alas! the lesson comes too late. It is for the living wisely to consider the end of their existence, to reflect on the possibilities of life, to resolve to waste no time in idleness, but to be up and doing in a manner befitting one who lives here a life preparatory simply to another and better existence.

Happiness is that single and glorious thing which is the very light and sun of the whole animated universe, and where she is not it were better that nothing should be. Without her wisdom is but a shadow, and virtue a name.

It is in the pursuit of happiness that the energies of man are put forth. It matters not that we are generally disappointed in the ultimate results of our endeavors. Earthly happiness is a phantom of which we hear much, but see little, whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed. She cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Anticipation is her herald, but disappointment is her companion. In the ideal scene every thing is painted in bright colors. There are no drawbacks, no disappointments, in that picture, but in the reality they are sure to appear. The anticipation of a pleasure may have lasted for weeks in the mind, and have been dwelt on in all the endless variety of possibilities, while the reality lasts but a short time. Hence the feeling of disappointment ensues. Hope immediately rallies the powers. We turn to new plans, and begin again the round of anticipation, ending in disappointments.

Happiness is much like to-morrow—only one day from us, yet never arriving. It is, in a word, hope or anticipation. In this life we pursue it; in the future life we hope to overtake it. It is the experience of all that, having realized our hopes, of whatever nature they may be, we are not satisfied. And it is well for man that he is so constituted, since satisfaction would be a bar to future efforts. We at once form new plans, grander and more comprehensive in their scope; we renew the struggle, press forward to their accomplishment, finding pleasure in the pursuit, if not in the possession. Perhaps nothing more plainly shows the diversity of the human mind than the different methods employed in this pursuit. Some seek it in the acquisition of wealth; others, of power; others, of fame. Some, by plunging into society, endeavor, by a giddy round of pleasure, to catch the same evanescent shadow that others seek by a life of solitude. No class or race of people exist but that have some characteristic mode in which they trust to secure happiness. The savage seeks it in hunting and fishing, in barbarous warfare, or in the rude war dance. National peculiarities are strongly shown in their ideas of what constitutes happiness; the light-hearted nations of the sunny south differing in this respect from their more serious northern neighbors. To be happy is the summing up of all the ends and aims on earth. It is a noble desire, implanted in the human breast by the Creator for purposes known only to his wisdom.

We talk of wealth, fame, and power as undeniable sources of enjoyment; and limited fortune, obscurity, and insignificance as incompatible with felicity. This is an instance of the remarkable distinction between theoretic conclusions and experience. However brilliant in speculation wealth, fame, and power are found in possession impotent to confer happiness. However decried in prospect limited fortune, obscurity, and insignificance are, by experience, found most friendly to real and lasting pleasure. It is not this or that or the other peculiar mode of life, nor in any particulars of outward circumstances, nor in any definite kind of labor or duty, that we may positively expect happiness. If we do we shall be disappointed, for it is not in our power to have things just our way, or to control our outward life just as we would.

We live amid a multitude of influences we can not altogether control. Nor is it best we should. We must seek happiness in the right state of mind, in the legitimate labors, duties, and pleasures of life, and then we shall find what we seek, yet we may find it under very different circumstances from what we expected. It is much more equally divided than some of us imagine. One man may possess most of the materials, but little of the thing; another may possess much of the thing, but few of the materials. In this particular view happiness has been compared to the manna in the desert—"he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack." Therefore, to diminish envy, let us consider not what others possess, but what they enjoy.

We may look for happiness in one direction, but find it in another, and sometimes where we expect the least we may find the most, and where we look for the most we shall find the least. We are shortsighted, and fail to see the ends of things. A great deal of the misery of life comes from this disposition to have things our own way, as though we could not be happy under any circumstances except those we have framed to meet our own wants. Circumstances are not half so essential to our happiness as most people imagine. A cabin is often the seat of more true happiness than a palace. Kings may bid higher for happiness than their subjects, but it is more apt to fall to the lot of the private citizen than the monarch. She sends to the palace her equipage, her pomp, and her train, but she herself is traveling _incognita_ to keep a private appointment with contentment, and to partake of a dinner of herbs in a cottage.

The disposition to make the best of life is what we want to make us happy. Those who are so willful and seemingly perverse about their outward circumstances are often intensely affected by the merest trifles. A little thing shadows their life for days. The want of some convenience, some personal gratification, some outward form or ornament will blight a day's joy. They can often bear a great calamity better than a small disappointment, because they nerve themselves to meet the former, and yield to the latter without an effort to resist. Molehills are magnified into mountains, and in the shadow of these mountains they sit down and weep. The very things they ought to have sometimes come unasked, and because they are not ready for them they will not enjoy them, but rather make them the cause of misery. There is also a disposition in such minds to multiply their troubles as well as magnify them. They make troubles of many things which should really be regarded as privileges, opportunities for self-sacrifice, for culture, for improving effort. They make troubles of the ordinary allotments of life; its duties, charities, changes, unavoidable accidents, reverses, and experiences. This can be considered in no other light than morally wrong, for these common allotments and experiences were, beyond all question, ordained by infinite wisdom as a healthy discipline for the soul of man.

Some spend life determined to be vastly happy at some future time, but for the present put off all enjoyment even of passing pleasures, seemingly for fear lest all such present comfort detracts from the sum total of future enjoyments. They, indeed, acquire wealth or fame or the outward surroundings of happiness; but, alas! too often the palmy days of life are gone, and the acquisitions from which they fondly hoped to gather much of human happiness form but the stately surroundings of real and heart-felt wretchedness. Happiness, then, should be as a modest mansion, which we can inhabit while we have our health and vigor to enjoy it; not a fabric so vast and expensive that it has cost us the best part of our lives to build it, and which we can enjoy only when we have less occasion for a habitation than for a tomb.

Happiness is a mosaic composed of many small stones. Each taken apart and viewed singly may be of little value; but when all are grouped together, judiciously combined, and set they form a pleasing and graceful whole, a costly jewel. Trample not under foot, then, the little pleasures which a gracious Providence scatters in the daily path while in search after some great and exciting joy. Happiness, after all, is a state of the mind. It can not consist in things. It follows thence that in the right discipline of the mind is the secret of true happiness. In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind do of colors.

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who seeks happiness by changing any thing but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he seeks to remove. The trouble often is, we are too selfish, too unyielding in our arrangements for life's best good. Because we can not find happiness in our own way we will not accept it in its appointed way, and so make ourselves miserable. Some excellent people are very unhappy from a kind of stubborn adherence to their settled convictions of just what they must have and what they must do to be happy. They lose sight of the fact that God rules above them, and a thousand influences work around them, partly, at least, beyond their control. They have not determined to accept life cheerfully in whatever form it may come, and seek for good under all circumstances.

We must seek for happiness in heaven-appointed ways, in study, duty, labor, exalted pleasures, with a constant effort to find it. We must seek it in domestic and business life, in the relations we hold to our fellow-men, and in the daily opportunities afforded us for discipline and self-sacrifice. If, then, you would be happy, possessing at least that measure of happiness which is vouchsafed to mortals, we must _intelligently_ seek happiness, not by way of impulse, not seeking selfishly our own good, but with a forgetfulness of self doing all the good we can, and with a thorough consecration of soul to the good of what we seek.

"Greatness, thou gaudy torment of our souls, The wise man's fetters, and the rage of fools."

There is so much in this world that is artificial, so much that glitters in borrowed light, that it is not singular that moral greatness and nobility are often counterfeited by some baser metal—so much so that it is no slight task to discriminate rightly between the true and the false, and to determine wherein true nobility doth consist. When we carefully consider the nature of man we readily admit that it is in the possession of moral and intellectual powers that his superiority over the brute world consists.

In the society of his fellow-men man ought not to be rated by his possessions, by his stores of gold, by his office of honor or trust; these are but temporary and accidental advantages, and the next turn of fortune may tear them from his grasp. The light of fame, though it shines with ever so clear a light, is able to dispel the darkness of death but a little ways. The greatest characters of antiquity are but little known. Curiosity follows them in vain, for the veil of oblivion successfully hides the greater portion of their lives.

The world ofttimes knows nothing of its greatest men. Their lives were passed in obscurity, but real nobility of character was theirs, and this is nearly always unseen and unknown. He who in tattered garments toils on the way may, and often does, possess more real nobility of spirit than he who is driven past in a chariot. It is the mind that makes the heart rich; and as the sun breaks through the darkest clouds, so honor peereth in the meanest habit. Public martyrdom of every shade has a certain _éclat_ and popularity connected with it that will often bear men up to endure its trials with courage; but those who suffer alone, without sympathy, for truth or principle—those who, unnoticed by men, maintain their part, and, in obscurity and amid discouragement, patiently fulfill their trust—these are the real heroes of the age, and the suffering they bear is real greatness.

It is refreshing to read the account of some of the truly great men and women, whose lives of usefulness have done much for the alleviation of the world's misery. And, after all, there is no true nobility except as it displays itself in good deeds. Says Matthew Henry: "Nothing can make a man truly great but being truly good, and partaking of God's holiness." That which constitutes human goodness, human greatness, and human nobleness is not the degree of enlightenment with which men pursue their own advantages, but it is self-forgetfulness, self-sacrifice, and the disregard of personal advantages, remote or contingent, because some other line of conduct is nearer right. The greatest man is he who chooses right with the most invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptations from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menaces and frowns.

Some persons are great only in their ability to do evil. Such appears to have constituted the greatness of many of those individuals who drenched the world in blood that their ambition might be satisfied. They may possess the most astonishing mental qualities, yet may be overruled for evil instead of good. Men of the most brilliant qualities need only a due admixture of pride, ambition, and selfishness to be great only in evil ways. Energy without integrity of character and a soul of goodness may only represent the embodied principle of evil. But when the elements of character are brought into action by a determinate will, and influenced by high purposes, man enters upon, and courageously perseveres in, the path of duty at whatever cost of worldly interests, he may be said to approach the summit of his being—to possess true nobility of character; he is the embodiment of the highest idea of manliness.

The life of such a man becomes repeated in the life and actions of others. He is just and upright in his business dealings, in his public actions, and in his family life. He will be honest in all things—in his works and in his words. He will be generous and merciful to his opponent—to those who are weaker as well as those stronger than himself. "The man of noble spirit converts all occurrences into experience, between which experience and his reason there is marriage, and the issue are his actions. He moves by affection, not for affection; he loves glory, scorns shame, and governeth and obeyeth with one countenance, for it comes from one consideration. Knowing reason to be no idle gift of nature he is the steersman of his own destiny. Truth is his goddess, and he takes pains to get her, not to look like her. Unto the society of men he is a sun whose clearness directs in a regular motion. He is the wise man's friend, the example of the indifferent, the medicine of the vicious. Thus time goeth not from him, but with him, and he feels age more by the strength of his soul than by the weakness of his body. Thus feels he no pain, but esteems all such things as friends that desire to file off his fetters and help him out of prison."

True nobility of spirit is always modest in expression. The grace of an action is gone as soon as we are convinced that it was done only that third persons might applaud the act. But he who is truly great, and does good because it is his duty, is not at all anxious that others should witness his acts. His aim is to do good because it is right. His nobility does not show itself in waiting and watching for some chance to do a great good at once. Greatness can only be rightly estimated when minuteness is justly reverenced. Greatness is the aggregation of minuteness; nor can its sublimity be felt truthfully by any mind unaccustomed to the watching of what is least. His nobility consists in being great in little things. All the little details of life are attended to, and thus the soul is prepared for great ones. There is more true nobility in duty faithfully done than in any one great act when others are looking on and signifying their approval, and thus by their sympathy spurring the soul on to greater exertions.

It is impossible to conceive of a truly great character, and not think of one imbued with the spirit of kindness. Nobility of spirit will not dwell with the haughty in manner. It delights to take up its abode with the generous and tender-hearted, those who seek to relieve the misery of others as they would their own. If you contrast the career of Napoleon Bonaparte and Florence Nightingale, though one filled all Europe with the terror of his name, doubt not that in the scale of moral greatness the latter far outweighs the former. Kindness is the most powerful instrument in the world to move men's hearts, and a word in kindness spoken will often do more for the furtherance of your cause than any amount of angry reasoning. Therefore, it is not singular that one whose whole life is spent in the exercise of kindness should possess a peculiar power over the lives of others—in effect, wield such an influence over them as marks him as one of the truly great.

Nobility of character is also reverential. The possession of this quality marks the noblest and highest type of manhood and womanhood. Reverence for things consecrated by the homage of generations, for high objects, pure thoughts, and noble aims, for the great men of former times and the high-minded workers among our contemporaries. Reverence is alike indispensable to the happiness of individuals, of families, and of nations. Without it there can be no trust, no faith, no confidence, either in God or man—neither social peace nor social progress. Reverence is but another name for love, which binds men to each other, and all to God.

The rewards of a life of moral greatness rests with posterity. Great men are like the oaks, under the branches of which men are happy in finding a refuge in times of storm and rain. But when the danger is past they take pleasure in cutting the bark and breaking the branches. As long as human nature is such a mass of contradictions this is not to be wondered at. But the influence of such men is ever working, and will sooner or later show itself. Men such as these are the true life-blood of the country to which they belong. They elevate and uphold it, fortify and ennoble it, and shed a glory over it by the example of life and character which they have bequeathed to it. "The names and manners of great men," says an able writer, "are the dowry of a nation." Whenever national life begins to quicken, the dead heroes rise in the memory of men. These men of noble principles are the salt of the earth. In death, as well as life, their example lives in their country, a stimulus and encouragement to all who have the soul to adopt it.

Nobility of character is within the reach of all. It is the result of patient endeavors after a life of goodness, and, when acquired, can not be swept away unless by the consent of its possessor. Wealth may be lost by no fault of its possessor, but greatness of soul is an abiding quality. One may fail in his other aims; the many accidents of life may bring to naught his most patient endeavors after worldly fame or success; but he who strives for nobility of character will not fail of reward, if he but diligently seek the same by earnest resolve and patient labor. Is there not in this a lesson of patience for many who are almost weary of striving for better things? If success does not crown their ambitious efforts, will they not be sustained by the smile of an approving conscience? Strong in this, they can wait with patience till, in the fullness of time, their reward cometh.

"He that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which ne'er enriches him, And makes me poor indeed."

—SHAKESPEARE.

A good name is the richest possession we have while living, and the best legacy we leave behind us when dead. It survives when we are no more; it endures when our bodies and the marbles which cover them have crumbled into dust. How can we obtain it? What means will secure it to us with the free consent of mankind and the acknowledged suffrages of the world? It is won by virtue, by skill, by industry, by patience and perseverance, and by humble and consistent trust and confidence in a high and overruling power. It is lost by folly, by ignorance, by ignominy and crime, by excessive ambition and avarice.

That good name, which is to be chosen rather than great riches, does not depend on the variable and shifting wind of popular opinion. It is based on permanent excellence, and is as immutable as virtue and truth. It consists in a fair and unsullied reputation—a reputation formed under the influence of virtuous principles, and awarded to us, not by the ignorant and the vicious, but by the intelligent and the good.

In such a name we look first of all for integrity, or an unbending regard to rectitude; we look for independence, or a determination to be governed by an enlightened consideration of truth and duty; for benevolence or a spirit of kindness and good-will toward men; and, finally, for a reverent regard for all moral qualities. These are the essential proper ties of a good character, the living, breathing lineaments of that good name which commends itself to the careful consideration of the truly good every-where.

It is ever to be kept in mind that a good name is in all cases the fruit of personal exertions. It is not inherited from parents; it is not created by external advantages. It is no necessary appendage of birth or wealth or talents or station, but the result of one's own endeavors, the fruit and reward of good principles manifested in a course of virtuous and honorable actions. Hence the attainment of a good name, however humble the station, is within the reach of all. No young man is excluded from this invaluable boon. He has only to fix his eye on the prize, and to press toward it in a course of virtuous and useful conduct, and it is his. It may be said that in the formation of a good name personal exertion is the first, the second, and the last virtue. Nothing great or excellent can be acquired without it. All the virtues of which it is composed are the result of untiring application and industry. Nothing can be more fatal to the attainment of a good character than a confidence in external advantages. These, if not seconded by your own endeavors, will drop you midway, or perhaps you will not have started when the diligent traveler will have won the race.