REAL HAPPINESS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 226, 24 September 1928, Page 6

REAL HAPPINESS.

As the statesman came on to the platform, amid the cheering of the crowd, to keep them spellbound for an hour, a man in the crowd was thinking: “How- happy that fellow must be!” As the royal personage stepped out of his car and the band played the National Anthem and the soldiers presented arms and all heads were bared, it seemed to many who looked on that no lot could be more enviable.

Yet both the royal personage and the statesman would doubtless have said that of all satisfactions those afforded by pageantry and politics are the most delusive. The one might have repeated after Henry V.: “What infinite heart’s ease must kings neglect that private men enjoy!” —the other, adapting Cardinal Wolsey’s lament, might have pleaded: “O how wretched is that poor man that hangs on people’s favours!” The best of life is in its quiet hours, in its homely affections, in the enjoyment of simple things. A famous writer said that all the grandeur and cleverness were nothing when set against “the laughter of little children, the friendship of friends, the cosy talk by the fireside.” AU who have tried both know that J. R. Green vu right. —L.C.