YOUR HAPPINESS JOB By HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE WE train and work and study for various ends. Be healthy, wealthy, and wise, we are told, and agree that the advice is excellent. It takes knowledge and horse sense and application to achieve these three things, certainly, but the gain is worth the effort. So we give our best years and strength to the job. But there is another job which is somehow apt to be overlooked. We seem to believe that to achieve success in that direction we neither need to take thought nor to put forth effort. Success that way comes or fails to come, and little we have to do with the matter. Yet without that item, the other three are not what they are said to be. Is it possible, then, to train and work and study for happiness as you do for the other good ends of life? Why not? There are certain definite things that make for happiness. There is, for instance, work. If happiness is important, then the work you do should be of the kind you love doing. It should be work that uses the best of you, that interests you constantly, that keeps you keen and fit. You should do it for the joy of itself, not for what you get out of it in a money sense. Pay you should get, of course, selfsupport, independence. But of two working roads before you, you should choose the one that leads to a full development of your talents and your brains, rather than the one that brings in the greater money return. For if you lose your joy in work, you have paid a higher price for money than it is worth. If you take your happiness job seriously, then, you will give a good deal of thought and plenty of time to selecting for your life's employment something that is going to be delightful to you. Probably the larger portion of your life will be spent at that work. You can see how important a part it must play in securing happiness for you. Happiness is not a slight thing, a thing of the moment, of a laughing day or a pleasant companion. It is a great and precious thing, built up on the very foundations of your being, part of each moment of your existence. The man or woman who is bored is not happy. To have work that interests you and keeps you alert in mind and body is a great safeguard against boredom. But there are other safeguards. Here, in a world crowded with tremendous interests, where even the tiniest insect is a subject for wonder, where you could never exhaust the possibilities of a single acre of meadow or woodland, here it is not the world that is a bore, it is yourself who insists upon being bored despite the hundred thousand calls on your mind, on your sense of beauty, on your emotions. Your mind has a million windows through which you may look out upon marvelous and thrilling things, if you keep the windows open, if you learn how to open them. Even though the work you do gives you happiness in the doing, it is not enough, because our possibilities for happiness are endless. You want to cultivate as many of them as you can. You want to remember that nothing worth while comes for nothing. To get the joy of music, for instance, you need to know something of that art. more you know, the greater your delight in it will be. It is the same with painting and sculpture. There is keen joy in these things, a joy that is developed by study and reflection and understanding. I have seen people look at the Victory of Samothrace or the Milo Venus as blindly as though there were no eyes in their heads. These forms of perfect beauty gave them no thrill of exquisite delight. For them the splendor of great art did not exist. They have failed to find one great source of happiness. Bored and dull, they stand before these mighty stones, which man's genius has transmuted to immortal spirit, and know it not and feel nothing. The Beauty, as we well know, is another of the definite items that bring happiness to the human being. Not only the beauty of art, but all beauty. If happiness is worth achievement, then cultivate your appreciation for beauty. Rejoice in it. Think how important it must have been considered, since so much time and detail is given to it in the building of the universe. Do you know that numberless tiny and intricate bones are placed in a bird's throat so that it may sing? Song is sheer beauty. Song is sheer beauty. Not only is the bird's throat marvelously made to sing, but your ear is wonderfully made to listen to that song. And the viewless air is fashioned to bear those notes from throat to ear, and so complete the amazing circle. Truly, the more you think about beauty and its tremendous place in this world, the more your astonishment grows. Think of the ravishing effects of color in every sphere of life. To train that eager mind of yours to respond to these beauties is a task fullpacked with joy and happiness. Once you let yourself get interested, no walk you take but will be rich, no idle hour with nature as your only companion but will be full of excitement and pleasure to you. The people The people who love her and who study her are happy folk, and each step they take brings glorious return. Training your capacity for reading, your understanding of the fine things of literature, is another sure pathway toward winning your happiness job. Language is one of our astonishing possessions, and is full of power and beauty. In great literature we find its highest expression, and we find, too, the thoughts and feeling of other men and women. Words are strange things. You can never walk side by side with John Muir, who has passed to farther trails than any he followed here. But take down one of his books from the shelf and read in it, and you seem to be walking with him, you see what he has seen, thrill to the adventures he has had, listen to his very voice as he speaks. You have had a glorious hour. Or take a simple story like "Jackanapes." You read those touching pages, so beautifully done, and you have added something to your own experience, something that will remain with you all your life. You have intimately shared another mind, another heart, through words, printed words. Is it not truly wonderful? And are not all sorts of lives and experiences and all the long thoughts of the generations of man yours if you choose to seek them? The love of books is a great love, a great power for happiness, and you can train yourself to find that love. To throw it away on cheap or vulgar stuff is to suffer a loss difficult to measure. Play and the joy of bodily exercise are one of the simpler methods of getting at our happiness job that ought not to be overlooked. When we are youngsters we take to this form of happiness naturally; but as we begin to grow older, many of us neglect it. Girls especially are apt to let play and sport fade out of their lives. This is a great pity. There is no reason why a woman should not rejoice in play all her life long, should not take exercise for the sheer pleasure of it, if she be healthy. Walking and swimming and golfing are easy to keep up, items toward happiness. in them as well as boys. and are valuable And girls delight Keep your limbs sound and active and your lungs full of fresh air. Youth and joy too will companion you as a reward. The great thing in training for happiness is to give time and effort toward developing the hundreds of avenues toward interest and activity which lie ready to hand within youto train those bright eyes of yours to see, to observe, to quicken your understanding of the loveliness and wonder of this world; to train your powers of appreciation and discrimination to bring to you all that is most worth while. Life is a thrilling, mysterious business if we do not smother it under commonplaces and dullnesses. The things men are doing are tremendous, and we too can be of that band if we will. This new generation now coming to the fore is sure to discover immense secrets that are still hidden to us, to find new and great truths, to do splendid and important things that will help the whole race onward on its mighty march. Each one of you can play some part in this work, and can get the true happiness of understanding and sharing what the rest are doing. Of the happiness to be got through friendship and from the other relations of life, I have not spoken. To get this happiness needs training, needs effort. You cannot be a good friend without trouble. You cannot, without charm, attract another. To be loved and valued is better than to achieve a business success that leaves you lonely and disliked. It is a fine thing to succeed in your business; give it your whole-hearted effort. But it is still finer to achieve a sincerity, a generosity, and simplicity that will make you good to be with, will make those who know you love you. Happiness comes with love, if that love is gentle and giving. You must work hard to make yourself lovable clean through, a work that goes on all your life and every minute of that life, but there is no surer way to grasp happiness than that. Life is a dangerous business, certainly, and all we cherish most in it may be swept away in an instant. But the fiber of happiness is not so easily destroyed. Sorrow and loss come to all, to some more, to others less. But it is from the warp and woof of your days that you construct happiness. It is born of the full use and gift of yourself; it is born of character, of delight in the day's employment, of an open heart to the beauty and the wonder of the world you are in, of response to the great calls that reach even beyond it. You cannot buy happiness, you have to make it. Its material lies within you. "LONE-STEER" FOSTER By BAYARD D. YORK THE second practice game of the season drew to a glorious close. From the enthusiastic stands sounded the Lockwood cheer: "Rah-rah, rah-rah, rah-rah Lockwood, Lockwood, Lockwood!" Foster, right tackle, walked slowly to the "gym." The team, he felt, was a wonder. Of course, there were still rough spots in the playing, but these would be smoothed out as the season advanced. Every man on the team was either a brilliant player or a smoothly running cog in an almost perfect machine. Foster was well aware that he was one of the cogs. This was his third year on the team; and in all that time he could not recall one occasion on which, in the heat of play when school spirit ran wild and the cheers were ripped out with crashing force, his name had ever been heard. A cog is not a spectacular thing. Sometimes a realization of this cut into his soul. Then he would say to himself: "They used to call your father an 'off-ox.' It looks as if you might be labeled "The Lone Steer.' Forget the other fellows." Most of the fellows he did forget, plodding his lone, stolid way; but there was one of them who always irritated him. This was Bolles. Like Foster, Bolles was earning his way through school, but there the likeness between them ended. Bolles was popular, clever, well-dressed, a bit slangy. Whatever he tried for always seemed to come to him without effort to Foster's disgust. "Well, fellows," said Bolles, breezing into the gym just as Foster was gingerly adjusting the hot and cold water of the shower, "'t was a snappy game. I hand it to youyou're a team!" Foster gave the little wheel a savage turn, and half scalded himself. He rubbed down and dressed rapidly and then strode out. The gym was too much like a farm-yard of cackling hens, he thought resentfully. He stopped at the little yellow-front lunchroom for supper, and then climbed the steep stairs to his third-story room. As a "lone steer" he usually had plenty of opportunity for study. To-night was to be an exception. He was just becoming involved in the intracacies of mediæval history when, dimly at first and then loud and clear, there floated up the stairway to his open door the whistled strains of "The Wearing of the Green." Little Nick Hurley danced into the room, singing in ungrammatical paraphrase: "It's the most distressful country that ever you have knew They're hanging men and women here for the wearing of the blue!" Had Bolles come into the room like that, it would have made Foster wild, but you had to like little Nick whether you wanted to or not. "That's what Ellington will want to do after the big game," Nick remarked. "But we 'll wear the blue just the same, and we 'll drape a little blue haze over them-eh, Mr. Right-Tackle Man?" He eyed the large history book skittishly. "Say, you study and play football andand eat and sleep-you do sleep sometimes, don't you?" he said. "Do you do anything else?" "Is n't that enough?" Foster asked with a bit of a smile. Nick sat down and threw one leg over the arm of the chair. "Uh-huh!" he agreed. "Only don't you ever have some great wish not connected with studies or football? Now, me, for instanceI want to be governor some day and wear a silk hat. Don't you-" The tone of banter disappeared abruptly from Nick's voice. He seemed to realize that his words had struck a deep chord. Five minutes later Foster was slowly telling something that he had never expected to let anybody know about. "It is n't an ordinary feeling at all," he said. "It's something that just gets hold of your whole soul and pulls and twists it till— till you 're almost ready to do anything-anything you should n't," he added with a wry smile. "You see, Mother's folks always lived near the ocean-and the pounding of the breakers and the smell of the salt spray were bred into her bones. When she married Father and he took her to the farm, he promised to go back with her to the shore now and then-but he never did. He never had the money for it. She died the year before Father did partly of homesickness for the ocean, I think!” "but just when I had money enough saved up, the dentist had to have it and then some other expenses came along." "That 's tough!" exclaimed Nick. "If I had a bank handy, I 'd leave the safe unlocked so you could help yourself; but-" He was interrupted by the sudden appearance at the door of a tall man whose every motion displayed energy and efficiency. "Evening, Foster," said this new arrival. "You don't know me, but I know youwhich is more to the point. May I have ten minutes of your time?" ing for a young man to work Saturdays. Yes, and"-he held up a hand at Foster's attempted interruption-"I know you play football that day, son. I know all about you. In fact, from the two hundred and forty-six young men who form the masculine part of Lockwood High, I have selected you as the one who most nearly fills my special and very particular requirements. Now money talks, does n't it? This is no common proposition that I'm placing before your wondering eyes. Here is the idea in tabloid form: we want you to work from eight A.M. until ten P.M. each Saturday, work hard, too, for which we will present to you each Saturday evening six round shiny silver plunks or their equivalent. Ah-that brought a flicker of interest to your eyes, did n't it!" He leaned back and shook a finger at the lad. "What's the matter with the young men of to-day?" he growled. "I 've fired nine boys in the past two weeks if this goes on much longer, I'll be getting old before my time. Some of them slam around and smash things; some of them go to sleep and fall into the sugar barrel; some of them are sassy to customers. I tell you-" he waved his hands impressively "there 's fame and fortune waiting for the chap who is willing to take a real interest in his work. What about it, son -have you any use for six dollars a week in your young life?" Lone-steer Foster sat very still. Around his knees his hands were clenched. Had he any use for six dollars a week-ah, the roar of the ocean seemed to grow out of the words! But there was the team! For four years now, Ellington Academy had beaten Lockwood. It was no time for anybody to quit. "I'd like to do it," Foster said, in a low tone. "But I can't go back on the team. After the season is over "Nothing doing," said Bitmore, promptly. "I'm after a man now and I'm going to get one now. To tell the truth, it was just a toss-up between you and another fellowyou won by a hair. I don't want to urge you -but it's now or never with this proposition." There was a moment of silence. "Do I understand it 's only the team that makes you hesitate?" "But for that, I'd say 'yes' in a second!" Foster cried. "Well," said Bitmore; "just between you and me, what has the team ever done for you -they don't pay your room rent, do they?" Foster's face hardened. The opportunity to realize his great dream of seeing the ocean had come to him at last. Should he throw it away because of any feeling of loyalty to a team and a school that regarded him as a mere cog? He stood up. "I'll come," he said quietly. "You want me to begin next Saturday, I presume?" "At eight sharp," said Bitmore, concisely. When Bitmore had gone, Foster took from one of the shelves behind him a rather large package that was protected by brown wrapping-paper and undid it very carefully. It was a large magazine. He opened it with slightly unsteady fingers and for a long time stood looking at the full-page picture of a wonderful surf breaking upon the rocks, the broad blue ocean in the background. "I am going to see it at last!" he murmured. He sat down and began to figure how much he would save each week. Now a cog, even an unimportant cog, cannot be removed from a machine without upsetting the working of it-and Foster was not an insignificant cog, as opposing teams well knew. His defection hit the team hard. They won two games by rather small scores and tied the next, when all three should have been won by big scores. The Sunday afternoon following the tie game, Foster heard a disturbance on the stairs, that presently resolved itself into: "It's the most distressful country that ever you did know They 're hanging men and women now for working in de sto'!" "Bad poetry, but good principle," Nick remarked as he came in. "We 're thinking of hanging every fellow who works in a store.” "Hang away," said Foster, shortly. "Well, I'm nothing but a senior," Nick murmured. "I've seen three teams beaten by that Ellington bunch-I suppose I can live through another defeat, though it does n't seem so just now." He sat down and pulled a bag of chocolate peppermints from his pocket. "I know you have n't any vices," he grinned; "but a couple of these won't cut your mental efficiency more than three per cent. I'm trying to bribe you into seeing reason. The fellows are pretty sore and I don't exactly blame them. I don't blame you either. It's all in the point of view. I don't blame you, but I think you are making a mistake." "How?" Foster demanded. "It's a little hard to put it into words," Nick said slowly. "It 's sort of that you are trying to play a lone game- all off by yourself. I don't believe it pays. Now there 's Bob Bolles "Bolles!" There was a world of scorn in Foster's tone. "There's Bob Bolles," Nick continued imperturbably. "I would n't trust Bob around the corner with a nickle-plated stickpin; but he 's friendly-" "If you care for that kind of a friend," Foster broke in. |