Hazlitt, who was none too happy, but who strove manfully for happiness, used to say that he felt a deeper obligation to Northcote than to any of his other friends who had done him far greater service, because Northcote's conversation was invariably gay and agreeable. "I never ate nor drank with him; but I have lived on his words with undiminished relish ever since I can remember; and when I leave him, I come out into the street with feelings lighter and more ethereal than I have at any other time." Here is a debt of friendship worth recording, and blither hearts than Hazlitt's have treasured similar benefactions. Mr. Robert Louis, Stevenson gladly acknowledged his gratitude to people who set him smiling when they came his way, or who smiled themselves from sheer cheerfulness of heart. They never knew—not posing as philanthropists—how far they helped him on his road; but he knew, and has thanked them in words not easily forgotten:
"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or, when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor. . . . A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of good-will; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted."
There is little doubt that the somewhat indiscriminate admiration lavished upon Mr. Stevenson himself was due less to his literary than to his personal qualities. People loved him, not because he was an admirable writer, but because he was a cheerful consumptive. There has been far too much said about his ill health, and nothing is so painful to contemplate as the lack of reserve on the part of relatives and executors which thrusts every detail of a man's life before the public eye. It provokes maudlin sentiment on the one side, and ungracious asperity on the other. But, in Mr. Stevenson's case, silence is hard to keep. He was a sufferer who for many years increased the gayety of life.
Genius alone can do this on a large scale; but everybody can do it on a little one. Our safest guide is the realization of a hard truth—that we are not privileged to share our troubles with other people. If we could make up our minds to spare our friends all details of ill health, of money losses, of domestic annoyances, of altercations, of committee work, of grievances, provocations, and anxieties, we should sin less against the world's good-humor. It may not be given us to add to the treasury of mirth; but there is considerable merit in not robbing it. I have read that "the most objectionable thing in the American manner is excessive cheerfulness," and would like to believe that so pardonable a fault is the worst we have to show. It is not our mission to depress, and one recalls with some satisfaction St. Simon's remark anent Madame de Maintenon, whom he certainly did not love. Courtiers less astute wondered at the enduring charm which this middle-aged woman, neither handsome nor witty, had for her royal husband. St. Simon held the clew. It was her "decorous gayety" which soothed Louis's tired heart. "She so governed her humors that at all times and under all circumstances she preserved her cheerfulness of demeanor."
There is little profit in asking ourselves or others whether life be a desirable possession. It is thrust upon us, without concurrence on our part. Unless we can abolish compulsory birth, our relish for the situation is not a controlling force. "Every child," we are told, "is sent to school a hundred years before he is born;" but he can neither profit by his schooling nor refuse his degree. Here we are in a world which holds much pain and many pleasures, oceans of tears and echoes of laughter. Our position is not without dignity, because we can endure; and not without enjoyment, because we can be merry. Gayety, to be sure, requires as much courage as endurance; but without courage the battle of life is lost. "To reckon dangers too curiously, to hearken too intently for the threat that runs through all the winning music of the world, to hold back the hand from the rose because of the thorn, and from life because of death—this is to be afraid of Pan."
