Ainslee's Magazine, February 1913 — page 92: what you’re looking at

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

82 May be, we say, for it all depends on the point of view, and it is, perhaps, simply in the point of view that happi- ness consists. _ In any event, if you want to please, you have got to be happy. But not too happy. There is nothing more melan- choly than people who are always gay. It is not only melancholy, it is danger- ous. According to the best opinions, continuous high spirits, constant op- timism, the ability to accept anything and everything with a smile, constitute a pathological condition which is symp- tomatic of general paralysis. Don’t be too gay, therefore, unless, indeed, it is your great good luck to be still a child. Children laugh for no reason, and what better reason could there be? But the laughter which is gracious in childhood is not becoming in age. No emotion is —save joy, for that is always serene. _ Be serene, therefore. Leave laughter to others, but excite it if you can. Peo- ple generally do not care for heavy views on light subjects. On heavy sub- jects they prefer light views. It is ad- vantageous to provide them, easy as well, for humor is merely common sense in fancy dress. In that costume one can go anywhere. With it, any situ- ation may be saved. Had Helen of Troy possessed it, the war of the world would not have been fought. Yet, what the lady lacked in humor she made up in Homer. The bard so dressed her in blood and beauty that we forget she was not a wit. We remember, though, that Theseus was not either. When he was saying good-by to Ariadne, he might have made her laugh instead of cry, had he asked her to forgive the liberty he was taking. Humor is, therefore, advisable. So, also, is tact. Humor saves situations, tact prevents mistakes. It is painful for people to be misunderstood. To be un- derstood is often still more so. Tact is the one pilot that can steer you through that channel. Be tactful, therefore. It is easy enough when you know how, and seems easier still when you don’t. Yet the secret of it is but a bundle of mixed negatives. Tactful people do not con- AINSLEE’S tend, they concede. They do not com- plain, they console. They are not em- phatic. They do not interfere. They never argue, they never explain, they never disappoint, they never tell a lie, or, if they do, they stick to it. Therein are the lesser mysteries of this art. They enlighten the neophyte without perfecting the adept. They will not serve to pass you initiate into the art itself. They disclose what you should be, not what you should do. They provide no criterion whereby you may at once decide whether an action is, or is not, pleasing. In search of that criterion, the philo- sophic and the polite have equally groped. Generally, they have agreed that the test of an action consists in its results. If the results are agreeable, so is the action. If the results are dis- agreeable, the action is also. But that is merely beating about the bush, and, besides, here again, tastes differ. The humor that amuses you may annoy your neighbor. A man’s happiness is not al- ways a joy unto his wife. In one wom- an’s tact there may be a sister’s discom- fiture. And so on, da capo, vice versa, ad infinitum. Moreover, admitting even, as is, perhaps, permissible, that agreeable things are agreeable, and dis- agreeable things the reverse, such oc- cultism, however profound, will not lead the neophyte to the seats where sit the sunetot, the di color che sanno, that is to say, the connoisseurs, the initiate, the masters of what’s what. To climb to their high seats there must be light from above, and, here, from the heights it comes, refracted from crystal parapets where once was unending spring, eternal youth, im- mortal beauty, the harmonies of divine honeymoons, the bliss of a golden dream which radiant goddesses and resplen- dent gods shared ideally. 3 In words of tormented polish, poets certify that into these extraordinary felicities an ordinary brute brought dis- cord. Caught, flayed, his tendons torn from him, these tendons were turned into the strings of a harp, and at once from discord came harmony. All this happened a long time ago, EORICLOO© S