The Joyful Heart

This is a guide-book to joy. It is for the use of the sad, the bored, the tired, anxious, disheartened and disappointed. It is for the use of all those whose cup of vitality is not brimming over.

The world has not yet seen enough of joy. It bears the reputation of an elusive sprite with finger always at lip bidding farewell. In certain dark periods, especially in times of international warfare, it threatens to vanish altogether from the earth. It is then the first duty of all peaceful folk to find and hold fast to joy, keeping it in trust for their embattled brothers.

Even if this were not their duty as citizens of the world, it would be their duty as patriots. For Jean Finot is right in declaring that "people who are nobly happy constitute the power, the beauty and the foundation of the state."

This book is a manual of enthusiasm--the power which drives the world--and of those kinds of exuberance (physical, mental and spiritual) which can make every moment of every life worth living. It aims to show how to get the most joy not only from traveling hopefully toward one's goal, but also from the goal itself on arrival there. It urges sound business methods in conducting that supreme business, the investment of one's vitality.

It would show how one may find happiness all alone with his better self, his 'Auto-Comrade'--an accomplishment well-nigh lost in this crowded age. It would show how the gospel of exuberance, by offering the joys of hitherto unsuspected power to the artist and his audience, bids fair to lift the arts again to the lofty level of the Periclean age. It would show the so-called "common" man or woman how to develop that creative sympathy which may make him a 'master by proxy,' and thus let him know the conscious happiness of playing an essential part in the creation of works of genius. In short, the book tries to show how the cup of joy may not only be kept full for one's personal use, but may also be made hospitably to brim over for others.

To the Atlantic Monthly thanks are due for permission to reprint chapters I, III and IV; to the North American Review, for chapter VIII; and to the Century, for chapters V, VI, IX and X.

R. H. S.

GEEENBUSH, MASS.

August, 1914.

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CONTENTS

I. A DEFENSE OF JOY

II. THE BRIMMING CUP

III. ENTHUSIASM

IV. A CHAPTER OF ENTHUSIASMS

V. THE AUTO-COMRADE

VI. VIM AND VISION

VII. PRINTED JOY

VIII. THE JOYFUL HEART FOR POETS

IX. THE JOYOUS MISSION OF MECHANICAL MUSIC

X. MASTERS BY PROXY

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THE JOYFUL HEART

I

A DEFENSE OF JOY

Joy is such stuff as the hinges of Heaven's doors are made of. So our fathers believed. So we supposed in childhood. Since then it has become the literary fashion to oppose this idea. The writers would have us think of joy not as a supernal hinge, but as a pottle of hay, hung by a crafty creator before humanity's asinine nose. The donkey is thus constantly incited to unrewarded efforts. And when he arrives at the journey's end he is either defrauded of the hay outright, or he dislikes it, or it disagrees with him.

Robert Louis Stevenson warns us that "to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive," beautifully portraying the emptiness and illusory character of achievement. And, of those who have attained, Mr. E. F. Benson exclaims, "God help them!" These sayings are typical of a widespread literary fashion. Now to slander Mistress Joy to-day is a serious matter. For we are coming to realize that she is a far more important person than we had supposed; that she is, in fact, one of the chief managers of life. Instead of doing a modest little business in an obscure suburb, she has offices that embrace the whole first floor of humanity's city hall.