Atlantic Classics Volume I Part 16

Catherine of Siena, whatever her sufferings, was always jocund, 'ever laughing in the Lord.' The blind Madame du Deffand rejoiced that her affliction was not rheumatism; Spurgeon's receipt for contentment was never to chew pills, but to swallow the disagreeable and have done with it; Darwin's comfort was that he had never consciously done anything to gain applause; and Jefferson never ceased affirming his belief in the satisfying power of common daylight, common pleasures, and all the common relations of life. Essipoff, when commiserated on the smallness of her hands, insisted that longer ones would be c.u.mbersome. Robert Schauffler's specific for a blue Monday is to whistle all the Brahms tunes he can remember. Dr. Cuyler, when very ill, replied to a relative's suggestion of the glorious company waiting him above, 'I've got all eternity to visit with those old fellows; I am in no hurry to go'; and old Aunt Mandy, when asked why she was so constantly cheerful, replied, 'Lor', chile, I jes' wear this world like a loose garment.'

Acts, all these, the flinging out of hand or tongue against adverse fortune. The brain can do it, too. One of the most remarkable statements I ever heard is Mary Antin's that she never had a dull hour in her life.

Now, outside things, doings, could not so have thrilled her days. Her spirit kept dullness distant. On the rafters of Montaigne's tower-room was written in Greek, 'It is not so much things that torment man as the opinion that he has of things.' Our opinions then make the contented or the discontented heart. Coleridge affirmed the shaping power of imagination to be so vitally human that the joy of life consists in it.

Haydon's chief pleasure was 'feeding on his own thoughts.' 'Make for yourselves nests of pleasant thoughts,' Ruskin urged. 'Whether G.o.d gave the Venetians St. Mark's bones does not matter,' he says elsewhere, 'but he gave them real joy and peace in their imagined treasure, more than we have in our real ones.' Lord Rosebery urges people to garden in winter in the imagination. Stevenson writes of the ease and pleasure of travels in the calendar and a voyage in the atlas; and Keats thought that a man might pa.s.s a very pleasant life by reading certain pages of poetry and wandering with them and musing and dreaming upon them.

It is the mood that makes the contented heart, just as the eye makes the horizon, and we ourselves make the light that we see things by. Clothes warm us only by keeping our own heat in. 'Everyone is well or ill at ease,' says Epictetus, 'according as he finds himself; not he whom the world believes but himself believes to be so is content.' To be concrete, take riches. 'Greedy fools,' sings the modern poet,

'Measure themselves by poor men never; Their standard being still richer men Makes them poor ever.'

The rich man is merely one who has something to spare; and the really poor one he who has nothing over. If you can give anything you are rich.

Try it. An old man tells me how Mark Hopkins used to examine the boys in the Westminster Catechism: 'What is the chief end of man?' 'To glorify G.o.d and enjoy him forever.' 'Well,' he burst forth, 'why don't you do it then?' It is not conceit, but hygiene of the soul, to 'enjoy one's self,' taking the conventional phrase literally. The trick of happiness, says Walt Whitman, is to tone down your wants and tastes low enough; and Stevenson puts in his say that the true measure of success is appreciation: 'I stand more in need of a deeper sense of contentment with life than of knowledge of the Bulgarian tongue.' What would the possession of a thousand a year avail, asks Thackeray, to one who was allowed to enjoy it only with the condition of wearing a shoe with a couple of nails in it?

Take knowledge, not to be confounded with wisdom,--'I have none,' sang Keats's thrush, 'and yet the evening listens.' It did not hurt Horace

if others be More rich or better read than me, Each has his place.

Montaigne would rather be more content and less knowing; and there is Lessing's great confession of faith: that if G.o.d in his right hand held all truth, and in his left the striving for truth, 'if he should say to me, "Choose," I would say, "Father, give me this striving, pure truth is for thee alone."'

Take work. Do you complain of it? Try doing more, of a productive sort.

An engine-builder received complaint that his engine burned too much coal. 'How many cars on the train?' was the telegraphed query, with the reply, 'Four.' 'Try twelve,' went the prescription, and the train drew twelve with economy of fuel. 'Your brain tired?' William James echoed a student. 'Never mind, work straight on and your brain will get its second wind.' I myself do not know of any anodyne surer and quicker than that found in the garden. When all the world is askew, dibbling in seedlings in straight rows is a wonderful solace. Why do so many women treat domesticity as drudgery? Its infinite variety, so unlike the monotonous tasks of men, often wearies the mind, but like Chesterton I do not see how it can narrow it. And socialism, with its cry of armchairs for workingmen! Armchairs, as Creighton n.o.bly says, will bring no lasting happiness; but to quicken a human being, even one's self, into a sense of the meaning of his life and destiny, that is a real happiness.

Take sorrow. Is it not infinitely better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Are there not many good moments in life which outweigh its greatest sorrows?

Take overpressure. Luther advised Melanchthon to stop managing the universe and let the Almighty do it; and Dr. Trumbull preached 'the duty of refusing to do good.'

Take the grief caused by others. One of the bravest women I know used in times of anxiety to gather her little children about her and say gayly, 'Now I will make some graham gems, and open some marmalade, and we will take a little comfort.' Solomon or Aristotle could have done no more.

Take, for a smile's sake, the weather. It may be bad, but as we cannot change it, the thing is our att.i.tude toward it; and as dark enshrouds us, 'The sun is set,' said Mr. Inglesant, cheerfully; 'but it will rise again. Let us go home.'

In such ways as these the right-minded person will meet his discontents face to face, and one by one eliminate them. He will also take stock of his a.s.sets. St. Teresa said that by thinking of heaven for a quarter of an hour every day one might hope to deserve it. Why do we not deliberately devote some minutes each day to saying to ourselves, 'I am tolerably well; I have food and shelter; everybody so far as I know respects me, and a few persons love me truly. I have books and a garden, the stars and the sea. I enjoy this and that, and before long the other.

The thing so long dreaded has never come to pa.s.s. I will embark at any rate for the land of the Contented Heart.' Would not such a conscious recapitulation be an actual force building up this thing of which we talk?

Can content be conveyed? Can it be pa.s.sed from one who has it to one who has it not--as one lamp lights another nor grows less? I wonder what would be the effect of a group of young women, lately conning over in college cla.s.s--

With what I most enjoy contented least--

if they should resolve to stop all that, and, undeterred by others'

estimate of values, be trustees of their own content, not suffering it to be contingent upon the manners and conduct of others? I believe that it would act like the magnet, which not only attracts the needle but infuses it with the power of drawing others. Great-heart so inspired the travelers that Christiana seized her viol and Mercy her lute, and, as they made sweet music, Ready-to-Halt took Despondency's daughter, Mrs.

Much-Afraid, by the hand and together they went dancing down the road.

Which is apropos of my contention that the Contented Heart is not so rare!

THE END