A Mirage

"How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ all
 the heart and soul and the senses forever in joy!" Browning

      It was a mirage that hung there before us for a little while, like reality, and then as we would have approached, it vanished. 

      "It is like happiness," I said to myself, "the little girl's, or mine, or another's. It is always before us; it disappears as we think we approach. No rapture is so sweet as its anticipation was. Happiness is a mirage." And an old verse came to mind : For here we have no abiding city.

      Well, then, I thought, that mirage, at any rate, represents something to which we wish to attain. It is an image of that abiding city elsewhere; and every day of our lives there are stepping-stones for us to use in reaching it.

      If the mirage vanishes as we draw near, we have always in the present the measure of happiness that comes with brave endurance; in the future that comes with expectancy ; and one day we reach the great goal. Let us be content then, day by day, with the stepping-stones.

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