It illustrates, too, what was said by Wilhelm von Humboldt, that “it is worthy of special remark that when we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself.”  We carry each day nobly, doing the duty or enjoying the privilege of the moment, without thinking whether or not it will make us happy.  This is quite in accord with the saying of George Herbert, “The consciousness of duty performed gives us music at midnight.”

Are not buoyant spirits like water sparkling when it runs? “I have found my greatest happiness in labor,” said Gladstone.  “I early formed a habit of industry, and it has been its own reward.  The young are apt to think that rest means a cessation from all effort, but I have found the most perfect rest in changing effort.  If brain-weary over books and study, go out into the blessed sunlight and the pure air, and give heartfelt exercise to the body.  The brain will soon become calm and rested.  The efforts of Nature are ceaseless.  Even in our sleep the heart throbs on.  I try to live close to Nature, and to imitate her in my labors.  The compensation is sound sleep, a wholesome digestion, and powers that are kept at their best; and this, I take it, is the chief reward of industry.”

“Owing to ingrained habits,” said Horace Mann, “work has always been to me what water is to a fish.  I have wondered a thousand times to hear people say, ‘I don’t like this business,’ or ’I wish I could exchange it for that;’ for with me, when I have had anything to do, I do not remember ever to have demurred, but have always set about it like a fatalist, and it was as sure to be done as the sun was to set.”

“One’s personal enjoyment is a very small thing, but one’s personal usefulness is a very important thing.”  Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.  “The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures,” says La Bruyere, “consists in promoting the pleasures of others.”  And Hawthorne has said that the inward pleasure of imparting pleasure is the choicest of all.

“Oh, it is great,” said Carlyle, “and there is no other greatness,—­to make some nook of God’s creation more fruitful, better, more worthy of God,—­to make some human heart a little wiser, manlier, happier, more blessed, less accursed!” The gladness of service, of having some honorable share in the world’s work, what is better than this?

“The Lord must love the common people,” said Lincoln, “for he made so many of them, and so few of the other kind.”  To extend to all the cup of joy is indeed angelic business, and there is nothing that makes one more beautiful than to be engaged in it.

“The high desire that others may be blest savors of heaven.”

The memory of those who spend their days in hanging sweet pictures of faith and trust in the galleries of sunless lives shall never perish from the earth.