You must first have a look at our objective points, and try to analyze these a little bit.  Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness.  These are somewhat intermingled, as we consider liberty an essence of happiness.  We also want health, and all that conduces thereto, particularly cleanliness and exercise.  We want a fair amount of amusement and a good amount of work.  We want the sense of being useful and the sense of being respected.  This people will accord us if we are striving to accomplish some of the innumerable things which people want to have done.  There is, of course, a higher field for man’s energy,—­that of striving for things which mankind ought to want for and doesn’t; the position of the martyr or reformer, who works for the welfare of the people and receives ill-treatment for it, like Christ.  But, while we all of us hope we would not be found wanting, were the demand made, we cannot help joining with Kipling in the wish “which I ’ope it won’t ’appen to me.”

Accordingly, while I am not blind to disagreeable but necessary possibilities, you will see that, if I digress to satisfy each one of them, I shall never reach the point, which no doubt in your mind by this time is the end; and so you must not pick flaws if I make statements which cover the probable, but not all the possible, contingencies.

We have found, then, that we want employment which will somehow add to the welfare of the human race; and is not this well worth doing?  If you make something of that nature your object, and keep it fully before your mind, how much better off you will be than if you have continually in mind your own amusement, your own comfort!  If you have your amusement as your life object, you will soon become a bored man, whom nothing will amuse.  If you have comfort, you will be the discontented man who is never comfortable; for you soon fix in your mind the ideal combination of temperature, garment, palate, belly, and entertainment, and, seldom being able to get them all at once, you will seldom quite reach your ideal.

You might remark that I have made the statement that employment in something useful is the element of happiness; but I have not proved it by reasoning, nor have I led up to it by any line of argument.  Let it rest at that.  I shall let your intelligence and experience supply the proof that a definite object of employment with something in view of interest and benefit to the human race is, if not an essence of happiness, perhaps the easiest way to obtain the elements of happiness; namely, an object for yourself, a sense of usefulness, and the respect of your associates.

In addition to this, you must not be unpleasant to the senses.  You must be morally and physically clean.  You must have good manners, which is mostly being courteous and sympathetic and doing sundry social things according to the social code which happens to be then in vogue.  You must learn, though it bores you as much as your Latin composition did, the proper way to dress at various functions and to answer people’s invitations and generally do the correct thing.