" Or he
may have been reading the statement of St. Paul: "For I have learned,
in whatever state I am, therewith to be content." Or, possibly, he
may have been thinking of the lines of Paul Laurence Dunbar,
"Sometimes the sun, unkindly hot,
My garden makes a desert spot;
Sometimes the blight upon the tree
Takes all my fruit away from me;
And then with throes of bitter pain
Rebellious passions rise and swell--
But life is more than fruit or grain,
And so I sing, and all is well."
I am plebeian enough to be fond of milk and crackers as a luncheon;
but I have just a dash of the patrician in my make-up and prefer the
milk unskimmed. Sometimes, I find that the cream has been devoted to
other, if not higher, uses and that my crackers must associate
perforce with milk of cerulean hue. Such a situation is a severe
test of character, and I am hoping that at such junctures along
life's highway I may find some support in the philosophy of Mr. van
Dyke.
I suspect that he is trying to make me understand that happiness is
subjective rather than objective--that happiness depends not upon
what we have, but upon what we do with what we have.
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