The Joyful Heart

this idea. The writers would have us think of joy not as a supernal hinge, but as a pottle of hay, hung by a crafty creator before humanity's asinine nose. The donkey is th

on exclaims, "God help them!" These sayings are typical of a widespread literary fashion. Now to slander Mistress Joy to-day is a serious matter. For we are coming to realize that she is a far more important person t

say about joy being the bribe that achievement offers us to get itself realized may be true in a sense. But they are wrong in speaking of the bribe as if it were an apple rotten at the core, or a bag of counterfeit coin, or a wisp of artificial hay. It is none of these things. It i

en grossly overestimated. This outcry about men being unable to enjoy what they have attained is a half-truth which cannot skate two consecutive strokes in the right direc

our celebrated writer-friends overlook the fact that glamour and "sweet bloom" are so much pepsin to help weak stomachs digest strong joy. If you would have the best possible time of it in the world, develop your j

ui for janitor. I admit that the old heaven of the Semitic poets was constructed somewhat along these lines. But that was no real heaven. The real heaven is a quiet, harpless, beautiful place where every one is a heaven-born

y master of the hangar, and Miss Annette Kellerman in charge of the swimming-pool. I am not denying that such a castle is easier to enjoy before the air has been squeezed out of it by the horny clutch of reality, which moves it to the journey's end and sets it down with a jar in its fifty-foot lot, complete with seven rooms and bath, and only half an hour from the depot. But this is not for one moment admitting

d the reader ask, "about a

ur powers may fail you when next you wish to use them. Thus the joy of anticipatory creation is akin to pain. It holds no such pure bliss as actual creation. When you are in full swing, what you have just finished (unless you are exhausted) seems to you nearly always the best piece of work that you have ever done. For your critical, inhibitory apparatus is temporarily paralyzed by the intoxication of the moment. What makes so many artists fail at these times to enjoy a maximum of pleasure and a mini

re-creating it for yourself. But, though re-creation demands almost as much vital overplus as creation, the layman should realize that he has, as a rule, far

ine (which are no hundredth part as beautiful, witty, wise, or brilliant as Hazlitt's), that the leaden showers of drudgery, discouragement, and disillusionment which accompany and follow almost every one of them, and the need of Spartan training for their sake, hardly displace a

ER THE

ch a regimen pays thousands of per cent. in yearly dividends. It allows one to live in an almost continual state of exaltation rather like that which the sprinter enjoys when, after months of flawless pr

one seriously doubts that it was just this which was giving Browning's young David such a glorious time of i

ut if your body is shouting for joy over the mere act of living, mental calisthenics no longer appear so impossibly irksome. And anyway, the discipline of your physical training has induced your will to put up with a good deal of irksomeness. This is partly because its eye is fixed on something beyond the far-off, divine event of achieving concentration on one subject for five minutes without allowing

ought which might bloom into some poisonous emotion such as fear, envy, hate, remorse, anger, and the like, there is only one right way to treat it. Pull it up like a weed; drop it on the rubbish heap as if it were a stinging nettle; and let some harmonious thought grow in its place

nd find by your plate a neat packet of spiritual exuberance with his best wishes. Such a gift is what the true artist enjoys when inspiration comes too fast and full for a dozen pens or brushes to record. Jeanne d'Arc knew it when the mysterious voices spoke to her; and St. John on Patmos; and every true lover

y is almost sure to induce the mental and spiritual varieties and to project itself into them. The mental kind looks before and after and warms body and soul with its radiant smile. And ev

ink there is no need of dwelling on their efficacy in helping one to enjoy achieve

e same old thing. In this connection I recall an epigram of Professor Woodrow Wilson's. He was lecturing to us young Princetonians about Gladstone's ability to make any subject of absorbing interest, even a four hours' speech on the budget. "Young gentlemen," cried the professor, "it is not

of his age to become a chronic infant in arms. Even traveling hopefully would pall if one kept at it twenty-four hours a day. Just feast on the rich food of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony morning, noon, and night for a few months, and see how you feel. There is no other way. Achievement must be moderately indulged in, not made the pretext for a debauch. If one has achieved a new cottage, for example, let him take

, and mine ample hostess herself to make and bring you the dish for which she is famous over half the countryside. Thus you will increase by at least one Baedekerian star-power the luster of the next Grand Hotel Royal de l'Univers which may receive you. And be sure to alternate pedestrianism

oy achievement so hugely? Simply because they are exuberant in mind, body, and spirit, and, if not averse to brandy and soda, are in o

all his glory not to enjoy the situation immensely and settle down in high good humor and cont

est carver. If a man holds this view, however, you may be rather sure that he belongs to the bourgeois great. For it is just as bourgeois to win fame and then not know what on earth to do with it, as it is to win fortune and then not know what on earth to do with it. The more cultivated a famous man is, the more he m

, can see the face of some beautiful child in the holiday crowd suddenly illuminated by the pleasure of recognizing him, from his pictures, as the author of her favorite story. He is bourgeois if it gives him no joy when the weight of his name

ith the niblick, and wipe the sand out of your eyes barely in time to see your ball creep across the distant green and drop into the hole? Has not the new president's aged father a slightly better time at the inauguration of his dear boy than he had at any time during the fifty years of hoping for and predicting that consummation? Does not the successful altru

t realize, at least, that their every thrill of response to a beautiful melody, their every laugh of delighted comprehension of Hazlitt or Crothers, is in itself attain

ore useful-though slightly supererogatory-service, to point out for the million-and-first time that achievement is not all that it seems to be from a considerable distance. In other words, that the laws of perspective will not budge. These writers would thus quite sufficiently have played dentist to Disappointment and extracted his venomous fangs for us in advance. W

reath and enjoy a complete panorama of his present achievement and may amuse himself moreover by re-climbing the mountain in retrospect. He has also yonder farther and loftier peak in his eye, which he may now look forward to attacking the week after next; for this little preliminary jaunt is giving him his mo

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