Naturally enough, this feeling has but strengthened and matured with
time and experience, and to-day, scattered broadcast over the world,
are friends of my childhood, my girlhood, and my womanhood, who look
upon my life as a tolerably beautiful thing, set apart by a lenient
destiny for a perpetual sunshine to brighten.
Ah well! Who knows, in this strange world whether there are many
happier than I? May it not be that other faces wear the mask of smiles
with which I myself have played a double part? I think I know enough
of human nature now, to suspect with Reason, that this livery of
contentment and joy which dazzles our eyes at intervals, as we review
the multitudes of the laughing and the gay, is a thing to be put on
and off at will, like any other garment; and hence is it that the
earthly happiness of men and women is susceptible of a relative
definition only. I do not wish to argue that such a thing as happiness
itself has become as obsolete in our day as hoop-skirts and
side-combs, for, from the earliest reflections I have ever indulged
in, I have concluded that it is quite easy to attain to a tolerable
degree of happiness, if external influences be not too desperately at
variance with our efforts to arrive at its tempting goal: and even
now, when I have made my way through some of the densest and darkest
fogs of experience, I know I should be happy yet, if, some day, I may
see the masses in revolt against the unjust tenets of nineteenth
century _convenances_, and advocating in its stead the beautiful
doctrine of "soul to soul as hand to hand.
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