Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 244, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 October 1915 — WHERE HAPPINESS DWELLS [ARTICLE]

WHERE HAPPINESS DWELLS

In the Simple LHe and Few Desires* Was the Opinion of Famed Jeremy Taylor. Said Epicurus. “I feed sweetly upon bread and water, those -sweet and easy provisions of the body, and I. defy the pleasures of costly provisions,” and the man was so confident that he had the advantage over wealthy tables that he thought himself happy as the immortal gods; for these provisions are easy, they are to be gotten without amazing cares; no man needs to flatter if he can live as Nature did intend; he need not swell his accounts and intricate his spirit with arts of subtlety and contrivance; he can be free from fears, and the chances of the world cannot concern him. And this is true, not only in those severe and ancboretical and philosophical, persons who lived meanly as a sheep and without variety as the Baptists; but in the same proportion it is also true In every man who can be contented with that which is lonestly sufficient. All our trouble is from within us; and if a dish of lettuce and a clear fountain can cool all my heats, so that I shall have neither thirst nor pride, lust nor revenge, envy nor ambition, I am lodged In the bosom of felicity; and Indeed no men sleep bo soundly as they that lay their heads upon Nature’s lap. For a single dish and a clean chalice, lifted from the spring, can cure any hunger and thirst; but the meat of Ahasuerus his feast cannot satisfy my ambition and my pride. He therefore .that hath the fewest desires and the mast quiet passions, whose wants are soon provided for, and whose possessions cannot be disturbed with violent fears —he that dwells next door to satisfaction and can carry bis needs and lay them down where he pleases —this man is the happy man; and this i> not to be. done in great designs and swelling fortunes.— Jeremy Taylor.