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Show WHAT IS HAPPINESS? Some saflron-hued Individual, with an overdose of dyspepsia and an unpronounceable un-pronounceable name shouts through one of the big Eastern periodicals: "What is happiness, anyway?" While the question Is not aimed directly di-rectly at The Republican, wo dare venture the, assertion that to more than us, happiness Is the waking knowiedgo that the wild and woolly nightmare Is untrue. To awake and find oneself In one's own bed (or a neighbor's for that matter) rather than In a cottln tilled with molasses tied to a balloon whose anchor has caught on the north pole, seems to us amply to till the Webstcrlan definition ot happiness: "An agreeable feeling rising from good fortune or propitious happening.1' - What greater "good fortune" could come to a man than the waking discovery dis-covery that In truth he is not a mangled corpse at tho base of a cliff over which he has tumbled? What happening could be more "propitious" than the fall from bed that breaks the spell In which the sleeping victim feels himself going over Niagara Falls, or head-first Into a boiling caldron tilled with fiendish little devils holding a pitchfork In one hand and a bundle of statements In the other? The Boston man's Idea of happiness may agree with that of Solomon, who urged the "Unding ot wisdom" and the "getting of understanding" as true happiness, but as for us, give us liberty or give us death! Speaking of nightmares, ( those charming animals that sit upon our breastbones tollowlng a 12 o'clock dose or domestic solence pic or salad), did you ever dream that, you were dead, and burled In the ashpit behind the house? Did you never struggle to be released from a colli n resting on the pinnacle of a mountain, the four sides of which wero straight "up and down" at least 20,009 feet? Were you never permitted to view the "end of the world" with its rain of lire, fait of stars, weeping and gnashing ot teeth? , As you slept did you never see tho moon shed blood? Did you never fall Into a deu ot snakes and lie helpless as the poisonous, cold, slimy, horrible reptiles crawled over your face, into your eyes, ears, nose and month? Didn't you ever .fall from a building, or sec your spirit depart from your body and then view that receptacle? In your dreams were you never compelled com-pelled to slide down a telephone polo wrapped with barbed wire? Did you never run tho gauntlet of Indians armed with war clubs studded with nails? ? if noneof these "nightmare?.1 delusions delu-sions have not been your portion then it Is useless for The Republican to attempt at-tempt to answer for you the question "What Is Happiness?" Happiness, dear friends, is what you reel when you wafce up and find you have only been asleep. - t - |
