Also it is important to put the happiness of the children rather
carefully in its place, which is really not a front place. The
unsympathetic, selfish, hard people who regard happiness as a very
exceptional indulgence to which children are by no means entitled,
though they may be allowed a very little of it on their birthdays or at
Christmas, are sometimes better parents in effect than those who imagine
that children are as capable of happiness as adults. Adults habitually
exaggerate their own capacity in that direction grossly; yet most adults
can stand an allowance of happiness that would be quite thrown away on
children. The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother
about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation,
because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person
is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active, which is
pleasanter than any happiness until you are tired of it. That is why it
is necessary to happiness that one should be tired. Music after dinner
is pleasant: music before breakfast is so unpleasant as to be clearly
unnatural. To people who are not overworked holidays are a nuisance.
To people who are, and who can afford them, they are a troublesome
necessity. A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.