But more than I want Fame I want Happiness. I have never been happy
in my weary young life.
Think, oh, _think_, of being happy for a year--for a day! How
brilliantly blue the sky would be; how swiftly and joyously would
the green rivers run; how madly, merrily triumphant the four winds
of heaven would sweep round the corners of the fair earth!
What would I not give for one day, one hour, of that charmed thing
Happiness! What would I not give up?
How we eager fools tread on each other’s heels, and tear each other’s
hair, and scratch each other’s faces, in our furious gallop after
Happiness! For some it is embodied in Fame, for some in Money, for
some in Power, for some in Virtue--and for me in something very
much like love.
None of the other fools desires Happiness as I desire it. For one
single hour of Happiness I would give up at once these things: Fame,
and Money, and Power, and Virtue, and Honor, and Righteousness, and
Truth, and Logic, and Philosophy, and Genius. The while I would
say, What a little, little price to pay for dear Happiness!
I am ready and waiting to give all that I have to the Devil in
exchange for Happiness. I have been tortured so long with the dull,
dull misery of Nothingness--all my nineteen years. I want to be
happy--oh, I want to be happy!
The Devil has not yet come. But I know that he usually comes, and
I wait him eagerly.
I am fortunate that I am not one of those who are burdened with
an innate sense of virtue and honor which must come always before
Happiness. They are but few who find their Happiness in their
Virtue. The rest of them must be content to see it walk away. But
with me Virtue and Honor are nothing.