The great depressor and destroyer of happiness is death; but from this blow, too, a healthful nature recovers. The broken and crushed plant rises again. The scar remains, but in the tissue beneath runs the same old blood. It is undoubtedly true, however, that as time wears on, life becomes of a soberer hue. We are young but once, and need not wish to be young more than once. There is the happiness of youth, there is the happiness of manhood, there is the happiness of old age,--each period wearing a hue peculiar to itself. One of the illusions of life, however, which it is hard to shake off, is the fancying we were happier in the past than we are in the present. The past has such power to hallow and heighten effects! In the distance the course we have traveled looks smooth and inviting. The present moment is always the lowest point in the circle; it is that part of the wheel which touches the ground. Those days in the past that so haunt our memory and that seem invested with a charm and a significance that is unknown to the present,--how shall we teach ourselves that it is all a trick of the imagination, the result of the medium through which they are seen, and that they, too, were once the present, and were as prosy and commonplace as the moment that now is? It is equally a mistake to suppose we shall be happier to-morrow or next day than we are to-day. When the future comes it will then be the present, no longer a matter of imagination, but of actual experience. This prosy, care-burdened self will be there, and the rainbow tints will still be in the distance. The man who is hampered and constrained by the circumstances of his life, thinks his happiness would be greatly augmented by greater freedom, if he could go here or there, do this or that. But the chances are that such would not be the case. For instance, when I see a man going up and down the country looking for a place to settle, to build himself a home, and when I think of my own experience in that direction, I say, happy is the man whom circumstances take by the collar and set down without any choice on his part, in a particular place, and say to him, “There, abide there, and earn thy bread there.” He is a free man then, paradoxical as it may seem,--free to make the most of his opportunities without regret. He is not the victim of his own whims or follies. He is not forever tormenting himself with the notion that he has made a mistake, that if he had gone here or there, he would have been happier. Now he accepts the inevitable and makes the most of it. He goes to work with the more heart because he has no choice. He wastes no time in regrets, he makes no comparisons that disturb him, but devotes all his strength to getting all the satisfaction out of life that is possible.