Happiness do I say? Yes, happiness; happiness to me above all others.
For I also in those days was among the young and the gay; I was
healthy; I was strong; I was prosperous in a worldly sense! I owed no
man a shilling; feared no man's face; shunned no man's presence. I held
a respectable station in society; I was myself, let me venture to say
it, respected generally for my personal qualities, apart from any
advantages I might draw from fortune or inheritance; I had reason to
think myself popular amongst the very slender circle of my
acquaintance; and finally, which perhaps was the crowning grace to all
these elements of happiness, I suffered not from the presence of
_ennui_, nor ever feared to suffer: for my temperament was
constitutionally ardent; I had a powerful animal sensibility; and I
knew the one great secret for maintaining its equipoise, viz., by
powerful daily exercise; and thus I lived in the light and presence,
or, (if I should not be suspected of seeking rhetorical expressions, I
would say,) in one eternal solstice of unclouded hope.
These, you will say, were blessings; these were golden elements of
felicity. They were so; and yet, with the single exception of my
healthy frame and firm animal organization, I feel that I have
mentioned hitherto nothing but what by comparison might be thought of a
vulgar quality.
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