The Bed-Book of Happiness | Page 3

as a Bed-Book of Happiness is one matter, to make it in very fact a Bed-Book of Happiness is another and a much harder matter. For, to begin with, one's judgment is not nearly so free and one's field of selection not nearly so wide as the anthologist's whose book is for all sorts and conditions of men, who may be as merry as he wishes on one page, as solemn as he chooses on the next, and as pathetic or sentimental as he likes on the page beyond. One has had to reject, for instance, humour that is too boisterous or noisy, wit that is too stinging and acrimonious, anecdotes that are touched with cruelty, essays that, otherwise cheerful, deviate into the shadows of a too sombre reflection. One has sought to compile a book of cheerfulness that is kind and of happiness that is quiet and composed. One has had always in mind the invalid just able to bear the effort of listening to a melodious voice. To amuse, to distract, to divert, and above all to charm--to bring a smile to the mind rather than laughter to the lips--has been the guiding principle of this book, and the task has not been easy. It is really extraordinary, to give but one instance of my difficulties, how frequently the most amusing work of comic writers is ruined by some chuckling jests about coffins, undertakers, or graves. If any reader in full health miss from this throng of glad faces, this muster of elated hearts, the most amusing and delightful of his familiar friends, let him ask himself, before he pass judgment on the anthologist, before he mistake a deliberate omission for a careless forgetfulness, whether those good friends of his, amiable and welcome enough at the dinner-table, are the companions he would choose for his most wearisome hours or for the bedside of his sick child. And if in these pages another should find that which neither amuses nor diverts his mind, that which seems to him to miss the magic and to lack the charm of happiness, let him pass on, with as much charity as he can spare for the anthologist, remembering the proverb of Terence and counting himself an infinitely happier man for this clear proof of his superior judgment.
I wished to include in this book, from the literature of other countries, such gentle, whimsical humour as one finds in the letters of FitzGerald or the Essays of Lamb. But, with all my searching I could find nothing of that kind, and judges whom I can trust assure me that no other literature has the exquisite note of happiness which sounds through English letters so quietly, so cheerfully, and so contentedly. Therefore my Bed-Book is almost entirely an English Bed-Book, for I liked not the biting acid of Voltaire's epigrams any more than the rollicking and disgustful coarseness of Boccaccio or Rabelais. It is an interesting reflection, if it be true, that English literature is par excellence the literature of Happiness.
"He who puts forth one depressing thought," says Lady Rachel Howard, "aids Satan in his work of torment. He who puts forth one cheering thought aids God in His work of beneficence." I have acted in the faith that life is essentially good, that the universe presents to the natural intuition of man a bright and glorious expression of Divine happiness, that to be fruitful, as George Sand has it, life must be felt as a blessing. One of the characters in a novel by Dost?evsky says, "Men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy."
Happiness, in its truest and only lasting sense, is the condition of a soul at unity with itself and in harmony with existence. To bring the sick and the sad and the unhappy at least some way on the road to this blissful state, is the purpose of my book; and it leaves me on its travel round the world with the wish that to whatever bedside of sickness, suffering, and lethargy it may come, it may bring with it the magic and contagious joy of those rare and gracious people whose longed-for visits to an invalid are like draughts of rejoicing health. I hope that my fine covers may soon be worn to the comfort of an old garment, that my new pages may be quickly shabbied to the endearment of a familiar face, and that the book will live at bedsides deepening and sweetening the reader's affection for its faded leaves till it come to seem an old, faithful, and never-failing friend, one who is never at fault and