Grandma to the Young People
By Annie Laurie
Annie Laurie, in San Francisco “Examiner” “THE trouble with you young people of to-day,” said grandma, “is this: You try so hard to be happy that you don’t have any time to try to be good — and goodness and happiness are twins. O, yes, laugh if you must! It’s true, all the same; all the rag-time and rag dancing and all that, won’t change an old, old law that has been in existence ever since the world began. “You can be good and not always be happy, but you can not be happy unless you are good — not for very long. I’ve seen ’em try it. I’ve tried it myself — it always fails. “That’s what’s the matter with you — all running to the divorce court every time the weather’s too hot or too cold, or the tire bursts at the wrong time, or the new dog turns out to be a throwback on something. Why, you poor things, you don’t do a thing but run after happiness, and happiness is the hardest runner I ever saw. “Nobody on earth will ever catch happiness by running after it. Stop running a while and she’ll come to visit — maybe. “When I was a girl, we didn’t expect to be so very happy. It wasn’t so important to be happy. The thing that made difference was, Were we good or not? Did we do the right thing? not, Did we do the pleasant thing? And I declare, I believe we were happier than you breathless, chasing, hurrying, discontented folks ever dreamed of being. “I wasn’t perfect by any manner of means. I used to sulk when anything went wrong with me. I did my best to get over it, prayed and prayed about it; but I guess I gave my dear husband a lot of unhappy hours. “Did he fall in love with some one else and divorce me so he could be happier? — He did not, wise man that he was; for the sort of woman who would take a man like that would be almost sure to have some faults, a good deal harder to bear than sulking. “My husband was a good man, and I was in love with him. O, yes, I was, tho he couldn’t do a one step, never heard of tennis, and would have thought a man who spent valuable time playing golf was crazy. “He was close in money matters, and I sometimes almost hated him for it — but I didn’t hunt for an ‘affinity’ for all that. I wanted to be good, so I did the best I could for my stingy husband; and by and by he wasn’t stingy after all, and we were happy together, and when he died I could lay a wreath of white roses on his grave without feeling like a fool. “I don’t see how a woman who’s left one husband for another just because she could be ‘happier’ with the second one, could do that. Do you? “Dear me, you work so hard to be ‘happy,’ you young folks of to-day! Why, you’ll give up everything there is just to be what you call ‘happy.’ You don’t seem to care a cent whether you are good or not. Do you? “And yet I don’t see any more happy faces now than I did when I was a girl — not one — not one.” And when grandma had gone upstairs, the young people and the middle-aged people on the porch looked at each other, and some of us smiled and some of us sighed. And as it happened to be Sunday, when we had our evening song around the camp-fire, we sang — what do you think? — Some old-fashioned hymns.