HOW TO INVITE HAPPINESS 



to the little disagreeable tasks of every day. If you are 

 accustomed from childhood to meet these half way; 

 to face them squarely instead of shirking them, you 

 are training in the best possible school for the devel- 

 opment of courage. The great trials when they come 

 to us are usually unavoidable; and just because they 

 are unavoidable, most of us meet them with a certain 

 fortitude. The weakest animal fights when pressed 

 into a corner. The timidest man may go into battle, 

 under stress of excitement, without fear. The most 

 abject criminal may go to the scaffold with a show 

 of unconcern. 



But this is fortitude, not courage. The two are not 

 altogether alien; but true courage is a trait of rarer 

 quality and one that may be proved by more delicate tests. 

 It finds exposition in the little affairs of e very-day life; 

 while at the same time its exercise in small affairs is 

 preparation for its application to greater trials. Success 

 or failure in practical life hangs perpetually in the 

 balance of courage as thus tested and developed. But 

 even short of this the cultivation of courage is one of the 

 most direct and tangible aids in pleasure-seeking; for 

 worriment and fear are the perennial banes to happi- 

 nesss, and courage is their standard antidote. 



Such development of self-control and self-reliance 

 as is here enjoined, however, must obviously constitute, 

 after all, only a negative appeal for happiness, through 

 the banishment of anxiety, worriment, and mental dis- 

 quietude. It remains to be pointed out, however, that 

 the receptiveness to enjoyment, and therefore the pos- 

 sibility of a greatly enhanced sum-total of happiness 



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