Page:Through the torii (IA throughtorii00noguiala).pdf/186



happiness is too commonplace even to wish to gain in the ordinary sense; at least its meaning has been changed. In the olden time, it was looked on as the most decent thing to desire beside health; people thought they had even a right to claim it, and it seems to me they got it in nine cases out of ten, as they were not so very fastidious. There is no time like to-day, when happiness has lost its golden dais; if health still keeps as a thousand years ago, a world-wide adoration, it is because it is least troubled with spirituality, that interesting baffler; and it is too honest to be less true. It never tells a lie. (But do you hate its homeliness and tactlessness?) We know that our forefathers who had, as it seems to-day, their virtue in stupidity, attached to happiness a meaning of permanence and stability of Cathay, and imagined it far away; but after all it is a superstition, is it not? And that superstition has been broken for some time now; however, I do not mean that happiness has ceased to exist. On the contrary, it is very much alive, Rh