246 LITEEAEY VALUES 



work, or works inversely. Do you suppose the mil- 

 lionaire's little girl has any more pleasure with her 

 hundred-dollar doll than your washerwoman's child 

 has with her rag baby ? And what would not the 

 millionaire himself give if he could eat his rich din- 

 ner with the relish the day laborer has in eating his ! 



The great depressor and destroyer of happiness is 

 death ; but from this blow, too, a healthful nature 

 recovers. The broken and crushed plant rises again. 

 The scar remains, but in the tissue beneath runs the 

 same old blood. 



It is undoubtedly true, however, that as time wears 

 on, life becomes of a soberer hue. We are young hut 

 once, and need not wish to be young more than once. 

 There is the happiness of youth, there is the happi- 

 ness of manhood, there is the happiness of old age, 

 — each period wearing a hue peculiar to itself. One 

 of the illusions of life, however, which it is hard 

 to shake off, is the fancying we Were happier in the 

 past than we are in the present. The past has such 

 power to hallow and heighten effects ! In the dis- 

 tance the course we have traveled looks smooth and 

 inviting. The present moment is always the lowest 

 point in the circle ; it is that part of the wheel which 

 touches the ground. Those days in the past that so 

 haunt our memory and that seem invested with a 

 charm and a significance that is unknown to the 

 present, — how shall we teach ourselves that it is all 

 a trick of the imagination, the result of the medium 

 through which they are seen, and that they, too, 

 were once the present, and were as prosy and com- 

 monplace as the moment that now is ? 



