For these reasons, it is worth every man’s while to study the important Art of living happily.  Even the poorest man may by this means extract an increased amount of joy and blessing from life.  The world need not be “a vale of tears,” unless we ourselves will it to be so.  We have the command, to a great extent, over our own lot.  At all events, our mind is our own possession; we can cherish happy thoughts there; we can regulate and control our tempers and dispositions to a considerable extent; we can educate ourselves, and bring out the better part of our nature, which in most men is allowed to sleep a deep sleep; we can read good books, cherish pure thoughts, and lead lives of peace, temperance, and virtue, so as to secure the respect of good men, and transmit the blessing of a faithful example to our successors.

The Art of Living is best exhibited in the Home.  The first condition of a happy home, where good influences prevail over bad ones, is Comfort.  Where there are carking cares, querulousness, untidiness, slovenliness, and dirt, there can be little comfort either for man or woman.  The husband who has been working all day, expects to have something as a compensation for his toil.  The least that his wife can do for him, is to make his house snug, clean, and tidy, against his home-coming at eve.  That is the truest economy—­the best housekeeping—­the worthiest domestic management—­which makes the home so pleasant and agreeable, that a man feels when approaching it, that he is about to enter a sanctuary; and that, when there, there is no alehouse attraction that can draw him away from it.

Some say that we worship Comfort too much.  The word is essentially English, and is said to be untranslateable, in its full meaning, into any foreign language.  It is intimately connected with the Fireside.  In warmer climes, people contrive to live out of doors.  They sun themselves in the streets.  Half their life is in public.  The genial air woos them forth, and keeps them abroad.  They enter their houses merely to eat and sleep.  They can scarcely be said to live there.

How different is it with us!  The raw air without, during so many months of the year, drives us within doors.  Hence we cultivate all manner of home pleasures.  Hence the host of delightful associations which rise up in the mind at the mention of the word Home.  Hence our household god, Comfort.

We are not satisfied merely with a home.  It must be comfortable.  The most wretched, indeed, are those who have no homes—­the homeless!  But not less wretched are those whose homes are without comfort—­those of whom Charles Lamb once said, “The homes of the very poor are no homes.”  It is Comfort, then, that is the soul of the home—­its essential principle—­its vital element.

Comfort does not mean merely warmth, good furniture, good eating and drinking.  It means something higher than this.  It means cleanliness, pure air, order, frugality,—­in a word, house-thrift and domestic government.  Comfort is the soil in which the human being grows,—­not only physically, but morally.  Comfort lies, indeed, at the root of many virtues.