Ainslee's Magazine, February 1913 — page 91: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MYSTERY OF CHARM lost.” With effort and energy, one may become almost anything, and remain a tedious person. The most tiresome peo- ple it is possible to meet are precisely those who are full of effort and energy. If you want to please you must be dif- ferent. To that end, intensify your in- dividuality. If you have no individu- ality, cultivate one. You may be told that it is better to have a regular income. ‘That is a very sordid view. Investments in the prose of life yield only dullness. You talk platitudes instead of subtleties, and de- generate into a mere-man of means. But, given the ability to please, and though you have nothing, you may have everything. There are young people naturally charming, who might have that and more. Before the opportunity occurs, they are given what is called a thorough education, and no descrip- tion of it could be falser. The only things worth knowing are the things that cannot be taught. The art of pleas- ing is one of them. It has, though, its apprehensible elements. But these are never expounded in the schools, the re- sult being that young people, otherwise promising, fail to realize that their first duty in life is to please. What their second is, we have yet to discover. The rudiments are more apparent. In considering them, it should be noted that sorrow is always a passage to a lesser perfection. Whether you like it or not, you must be happy. Nothing, except disease and genius, can hinder you more than potpourris of melan- choly airs. If you wish people to wel- come you, get them to tell you their troubles. If you wish them to avoid you, tell them your own. Better still, do not have any. During the mad days of the Red Terror, a great lady went to the guillotine smelling a rose. That is the proper attitude. Should the pic- ture of it not inspire, then consider one of Whistler. His creditors offered to accept thirteen and six in the pound. Whistler refused. They offered to take twelve. Whistler again refused. “But, sir,” one of them expostulated, “we are trying to get you out of your trou- bles.” “My troubles!” Whistler ex- 6 8I claimed. ‘My troubles, did I under- stand you to say? Why, good Lord, sir! They are not my troubles, they are yours!” That, while wickedly witty, was not the proper attitude, not ethically at least, though artistically it was the proper spirit. Let the other man worry. Do not do so yourself. Do not do so, that is, 1f you want to be happy. You can- not please even yourself unless you are. But what is happiness? Heine said it consisted in being happy. It were difficult to be more profound, yet the dictionary appears to have succeeded. The dictionary says that happiness is a state of good fortune. Tastes differ. There was once a satrap whose good fortune was such that he had everything in sight, and out of it, except happiness itself. To acquire it, he was advised to get and wear the coat of a happy man. But you know the story. -You know that when at last the happy man was found, it was found, too, that he was coatless. From which you may see not only how tastes differ, but how useful dictionaries are. But these are laborious thoughts. Be- sides, if happiness is not a state of for- tune, good or bad, it must be something else. Hugo, always magnificent, said it was a banquet. Hugo awoke each morning drunk, as a poet should be, with the nectar he had sipped in dream. Another poet declared that dreams are true while they last. If you can but contrive to live in them, there is hap- piness, there is the feast. Practical people will object that dreams are but the odors of the festival, the aroma of the repast, that the real banquet has a solid basis, and that basis, expressed in one word, is wealth. But practical people recognize only the ob- vious, and that is very misleading. Mis- fortune, which is always jealous of the favored, may strike and divest the rich. No one can strip a naked man. For which reason, perhaps, unless it be for another, the gayest people on our visit- ing list are paupers, and the glummest are plutocrats. Money is not happiness expressed in a word, though lack of it may be unhappiness expressed in three. COLMUCE IOOk (E@