be gone before we know it.  It is a well-known psychological law that if we choke the expression of an emotion, we shall presently find that we have smothered the emotion itself.  It may seem like hollow pretense at first, but it will pay to pretend hard; when we have pretended long enough, we shall find we no longer need to pretend.  There will always be those, no doubt, who will declare it impossible, and they will continue to be unhappy; there will be many others who will concede the possibility of it, but will not have the determination and persistence to effect it; but there will always be some who will say, “Happiness is possible!” who will set out to get it, and who will get it, as they will deserve to.  Some men are born happy, some seem to have happiness thrust upon them, but some achieve happiness.  It will not be the same kind of happiness that we had as children, before the shocks of life awoke us.  It will be a happiness that meets and rises above pain.  Life will always have its tragedies, sickness and separation, pain and sudden death.  They are the common inheritance of mankind.  But it is not these things in themselves that make life unendurable, it is the way we take them, our fear of them, our worry over them, our longings and rebelliousness, our magnifying and brooding over and shrinking from them; when we resolve to lift our heads and assert our power, we shall find life tragic, yes, but endurable, and full of a deep joy.  The little worries and disappointments will cease to trouble us.  And the same attitude that enables us to rise above them will, when more staunchly held, lift us over the great sorrows also, and keep alive in us an under glow of joy.  An under glow of joy-that is what can be found in life in any but its highly abnormal phases, by conforming to its conditions and taking it for what it is, stuff which, we have to shape into service to the ideal.  It should be recognized as the final word of personal morality that a man must train himself to a happiness that is independent of circumstances.  We need no mystical painting out of the shadows, no blindness to facts, only a will to serve the right, a readiness to accept the imperfect, and eyes to see the beauty that surrounds us.  “If I have faltered more or less In my great task of happiness, If I have moved among my race And shown no glorious morning face, If beams from happy human eyes Have moved me not; if morning skies, Books” and my food, and summer rain, Knocked on my sullen heart in vain.  If, in short, we have not disciplined ourselves to happiness, it may well be maintained that we have left undone our highest duty to our neighbor and ourselves.  And he may with good reason declare that he has solved the greatest problem of life who can proclaim with Tolstoy, “I rejoice in having taught myself not to be sad!” or with the Apostle Paul, “I have learned in whatsoever state I am therein to be content.”  Much of the secret of happiness is to be found in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and, of course, in the Gospels.  Of modern writers, among the most useful are Stevenson and Chesterton.  See, for example, Stevenson’s Christmas Sermon, and J. F. Genung’s Stevenson’s Attitude toward Life.  Chesterton’s counsels are too sattered to make reference practicable.