How to be Happy Though Good

Showing that Virtue is Not Always Dull, Nor is Ruthlessness the Same as Being Rude

NANCY BOYD

AS a child I was early turned from the path of righteousness by the unfortunate remark once let drop in my presence by my mother that virtue is its own reward. Hitherto I had supposed that if I were being good it was for some decent and intelligible purpose. If I wrote to grandmother, it was with the definite understanding, so I thought, between myself and my environment, that I was to get a train of cars for Christmas, or a boat with VACATION painted about its prow; and none of your girl-toys, either,—a train capable of doing physical violence to the person and the cargo of any tea-wagon that might get across its track, and a boat that would take the kitten for a nice long sail. Fancy my consternation, therefore, when it was thus by chance brought home to me that if. I wrote to grandmother it was presumably in order that I might receive a letter from grandmother in return!

With Virtue I was well acquainted. It was a soft pink dragon with upturned blue eyes, a sugary voice, and quantities of yellow hair done up in curl-rags. It had an intricate and uncomfortable apparatus constructed of brass wires on its upper front teeth, which it never on any account removed and left in the hammock. There was an apron over its tummy, with no jam-stains on it. On its hind feet were two exceedingly large and shiny rubbers; of its front feet the right was endlessly engaged in performing do-re-mi-thumb-sol-la-si-do on a pure-white piano, while the other, rhythmically assaulted the back of its neck with a bathsponge (the left having not the remotest idea what the right was doing); its four fat legs were warmly encased in rough white woolen underclothing, somewhat large at the wrists and ankles. Affixed to its shoulder-blades were two very heavy and unwieldy wings, composed exclusively of red, blue and white feathers; and fastened behind its head was a shiny golden thing shaped like a Victrola record.

Diverting Virtue

I HAD always supposed that if one fed the dragon twice a day with tooth-paste, which was its favourite ailment, recited to it one's arithmetic lesson, which was what it loved more than all the world to hear, and tickled its flabby pink back with a neatly sharpened pencil, some afternoon it would go smilingly to sleep, and one could sneak around into the enchanted garden, where cherries and caramels and pickled cucumbers grew riotously on the lowest boughs, and the highest boughs were bare of all save leaves.

But no such thing! Here was I wasting my youth in good deeds that would get me nowhere. Morning after morning of perspiring application to my joggafy; the beautiful afternoons dissipated in sitting on the porch, taking out long stitches and trying to put in short ones; or going for a walk with my governess, who preferred the tiresome road to the lovely ditch, and insisted on addressing me in a language which was not my own; evening after evening embittered by optimistic juvenile literature,—as if it were not bad enough to have to be good, without having to read about being good!—; and the wonderful night all lost in hateful sleep. And in the end, what was I to receive for my pains?—Virtue. That is to say, the Dragon.

Not I!

You have heard the little story of the little girl who saved up all her little pennies in her little bank and, when the little bank was as full as a little tick, her mother opened it and bought her a great big bottle of cod-liver-oil? Well, that was some other little girl. Long before I had a penny to my name I had scented the perfidy and hypocrisy of the world about me, and laid my little plans.

"Virtue is its own reward," my mother had said. And from that moment dates my flying descent down the ice-paved boulevard of wilful misdoing.

I became unmanageable. I would no longer eat my cereal. It occurred to me for the first time that I had always hated it. I would no longer line my mind with the down and cottonbatting of Dolly Dimples and Rollo on the Atlantic. One morning I hid for hours under my mother's bed, reading the Kreutzer Sonata, which fascinated me strangely; and when my mother found me and took the book away and set me to sewing, I sewed my sewing into the arm of my father's chair.

The Joys of Rebelliousness

THAT afternoon I refused to accompany my governess on the daily excursion. They tried to persuade me. I was firm. They sought to reason with me. I threw myself upon the floor and yelled. They seized my feet and endeavoured to drag me forth into the healthful out-of-doors. I grabbed the piano-lamp by its fragile base and succeeded in taking it with me. My mother was filled with consternation. She rushed to the telephone. And soon, much to my disgust, there entered the room the family doctor. He took me affectionately upon his knee; I kicked him in the leg. When he had taken my pulse, with some difficulty, he requested that I put out my tongue. I did so, to its full length and with unnecessary enthusiasm. Whereupon he unceremoniously inverted me and administered to my person an efficient and hearty spanking.

It had seemed to me, naturally enough, that if indeed virtue were its own reward, then, conversely, the reward of sin must be the coveted privilege of sinning as much as one liked. But I was mistaken. My mother had deceived me. Virtue was not its own reward. Or if it were, it was the reward of other things as well. For every hour sweetly spent in wickedness I was inevitably forced to devote at least two hours to the unattractive industries of the .blest. Virtue, it was all too plain, was the reward of vice.

In my perplexity I began to watch my elders for some hint as to conduct. They had lived a long time. It was unreasonable to suppose that they had had no pleasure at all in their lives. How did they go about getting it?

I soon became aware of many little things that interested me greatly. For instance, if my father sent roses to my mother on Saturday, I observed that on Sunday he went fishing. If my governess suggested that we visit the sodafountain in order that I might have an icecream, I observed that once there she made away with two ice-creams and a soda herself. If my elder brother accompanied my mother to church, I remembered that the preceding night I had heard him come creeping up the stairs in his stocking feet. It was simple enough. If you were good, it was either because you had just been bad, or were about to be. Being bad being synonymous in my mind, and not without reason, with doing what one wished.

I changed my tactics. I did not become good, for that would have gained me nothing, but I became tractable. I made it possible for people to put in ray way small considerations, such as sweets, chocolate-covered, even, on occasion, books without Morals, afternoons in town at the Hippodrome, in unregenerate exchange for half-hours at the piano the exports of Brazil, and generally speaking, a little peace and quiet in the home.

A Mature Technique

TO this day I have changed but little. I am held to be a most exemplary person. And^so I am, for long periods of time. Sometimes for weeks on end I am so good that it sickens me. For I have learned that it is more beautiful to be unselfish than to be selfish, except as regards things which one wants. I was long ago forced to admit that not all my tastes are vicious, nor all my desires necessarily at war with the social weal. I do not prefer evil to good. I simply prefer the things that I prefer to the things that I do not prefer. And I go about getting them, with no flourish of trumpets or fanfare of drums, but with a guile and suavity worthy of a nobler cause.

"I'm afraid there isn't room for everybody in the car," says my hostess, in distress.

"I will stay behind," I suggest, prettily. "I really wouldn't mind at all."

"Oh, no, indeed! I couldn't think of letting you do that!" cries my hostess, aghast, only too glad to take me at my word, but making the usual pretense of casting about for another way to do the thing. "Maybe we can all squeeze in. Though—"

"Nonsense," I retort. "It would just make everybody uncomfortable. It doesn't matter at all, really. No—don't say a word—it's all settled. Goodbye! Have a good time! Goodbye!"

Whereupon I go back to the hammock, and pick up my novel with a happy sigh. I loathe motoring.

"Poor Dicky," says my hostess another day, "he is so keen to go to the movies this afternoon. But it's Celestine's half-day out, and Fanchette has gone to the zoo with Chloe. There's nobody to take him. It's one of those dreadful old Charlie Chaplin pictures."

"I'll take him," say I, with a charming gesture drawing the little boy to my side,—a detestable little boy.

"Oh, no, I couldn't think of it!" cries my hostess as before. "I know how you hate the motion pictures. I've heard you say. It's terribly sweet of you. But I couldn't think of it. Come, Dicky."

"Nonsense," I reprove her, gaily. "Dicky and I are going to the movies. Aren't we, Dicky?"

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And off we go, wafted on a holy wind of patient sacrifice.

I adore Charlie Chaplin.

But, on the other hand: let the stumbling, the philosophic, the largefooted, come up to me and beg me for a dance.

"What?" I cry, "after you cut me dead on the street the other afternoon? I should say not. Never again."

Or supposing you send me a note inviting me to tea to meet your sisterin-law who has just come East. I do not receive that note. The mail service is terrible.

Or supposing you think to pin me down by getting at me in person on the telephone.

"Tomorrow night?" I gurgle, happily, "Oh, I should just adore to! Oh, but wait a minute—tomorrow night, is that Wednesday?—I'm afraid I—I'll see what I can do. I'll call you up."

And in half an hour my maid calls you up, and tells you that I am very sorry.

So it is that I live courted, and shall die lamented.

Ruthless But Not Rude

VIRTUE, of course, as we all very well know, is not an end in itself, but merely a means to an end. If you are good, it is either because you want something you won't get if you are bad, or don't want something you will get if you are bad,—or are afraid you'll get. Everyone knows that. It is as simple as anything. A child can use it. And invariably does.

But one must not make the mistake of deducing from this formula that all vice is pleasant and all virtue dull. No. Do what you like. Ride over everybody, so that you do not ride roughshod. Be ruthless, but don't be rude. Be naughty, but don't be noisy. Sin without ostentation. But oh, gentle reader, on those rare occasions when pleasure and virtue coincide, then, for the love of Society, that cross-eyed, harassed mother of chicks that swim! —come out of hiding, seize a trumpet and a big silk flag, and ride through the city on a waltzing elephant.

NOTE: Exiled, a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, was reprinted in the March issue of this magazine without the proper credit being given to Ainslee's Magazine, in whose pages the poem first appeared. The Editor takes this opportunity to express his regret at this omission and his indebtedness.