HAPPINESS AND THE PURSUIT OF IT. 
ing no pleasure in their possessions, they sell or rent 
their fine house on which they had prided themselves 
so much, and try change and travel. In nine cases out 
of ten, they go abroad, and make the tour of Europe, 
but they do not escape me, no indeed ! I follow them 
in all their journeys, keeping them continually on the 
move, putting a few pins in every new purchase, or 
new place, just to keep them from too much tran- 
quillity. Finally, the rich man turns his face home- 
ward again, under a vain impression that, among the 
old familiar scenes, the old rest and comfort will be 
found. Delusion. I put pins in his old pleasures, his 
old pursuits, until he can glean nothing restful from 
them, and is fain to become a dissatisfied grumbler for 
the rest of his life. But my grand stroke of business 
is, to put a few sharp pins into a married man, and 
send him home smarting under their effect : of course 
he thinks that his business perplexities have irritated 
him, and lays his ill-humor on some rise or fall 
of merchandise [or those awful coolies] ; but I know 
better. Naturally, he vents some part, no doubt the 
greatest ; if not the whole, of his vexation upon his 
wife, and this saves me a very great deal of work, 
since no thrust of mine, however sharp, could equal 
the pain her husband’s ill-temper gives her. In fact 
that is the easiest way to reach a married woman, 
for all the pins I can put into the domestic machinery, 
all the sharp-pointed frictions of social life, are as 
nothing compared with the smart a husband’s looks 
and words can inflict. Very often, too, I make one 
at a dinner or evening party, and slyly put a few 
spare pins in, here and there. Have you never been 
thoroughly uncomfortable at a social gathering where 
you expected to find only enjoyment? Ah! that was 
owing to some of my pins. But don’t suppose I am 
utterly given up and over to malicious mischief. My 
vocation gives me many opportunities of doing good, 
which I embrace very gladly. When I catch people 
saying unkind things, repeating foolish gossip, showing 
selfish disregard for the happiness of others, I never 
fail to prick them severely. Want of honor, honesty, 
extravagance, wasted opportunities, all these, and nu- 
> merous other causes, provoke me, the sharpest pricks and 
thrusts, given with unceasing vigilance. But it often 
seems to me the more I disturb and torment them, 
the more they engross themselves in schemes of 
fraud and corruption. Why, I have sometimes been 
quite in want of pins, because of the myriads I have, 
wasted on these people. Then, I practise economy, 
and make use of substitutes, and the very best in use^ 
are the ^ bores.’ Why, with one really effecient 
first-class ‘bore,’ I can make a do 25 en people 
