One has to spend
so many years in learning how
to be happy. I am just beginning to make
some progress in the science, and I hope to disprove
Young’s theory that “as soon as we have found the key of life
it opens the gates of death.” Every year strips us of at least one vain
expectation, and teaches us to reckon some solid good in its
stead. I never will believe that our youngest days are
our happiest. What a miserable augury for the
progress of the race and the destination
of the individual if the more matured
and enlightened state is the
less happy one!
Childhood is only
the beautiful and happy time
in contemplation and retrospect:
to the child it is full of deep sorrows,
the meaning of which is unknown. Witness
colic and whooping-cough and dread of ghosts,
to say nothing of hell and Satan, and an offended Deity
in the sky, who was angry when I wanted too much plumcake.
Then the sorrows of older persons, which children see but
cannot understand, are worse than all. All this to prove
that we are happier than when we were seven years
old, and that we shall be happier when we are
forty than we are now, which I call a
comfortable doctrine, and one
worth trying to
believe!