Stepping Stones to Happiness

      The following Victorian Era text, 1897, was written by Mrs. Harriet Spofford, who was a frequent contributor to The Christian Herald. Film and additional texts included with the posts are the property of their respective owners. Video is included with the text here in order to enhance the education of our readers and falls under the user agreement concerning video/texts uploaded to YouTube.

      Additional quotes included were selected by Spofford and the illustrators were not given credit at the time of the original publication. I have also included additional references, text and illustrations to enhance the individual chapters.

Introductory. In all ages, the Search for Happiness has been the ultimate aim and desire of human effort Happiness here and hereafter. To those Searchers, in every station in life, this Book is dedicated, in the hope that it may be the means of guiding them, by pleasant paths, to the true Temple of Happiness, whence flow those delectable streams that refresh the hearts and rejoice the souls of all who enter the quest with a pure and resolute purpose. 

      Happiness is equally attainable to the poor and the rich, the youth and the veteran ; and though multitudes have missed the Path, Stepping Stones To Happiness will lead them back to the way, by which they may surely find it. May they, in turn, extend loving help to other struggling wayfarers on the same journey. 

Preface. When one writes for publication, however great the surrounding solitude, there is always one companion present.

      It is the personage known in literature as the Gentle Reader. This reader is kinder than one's self; has almost as much to do with the progress of the pages ; cheers, encourages, and helps with both subtle and outright sympathy.

      And when the manuscript has gone to do its work in the world, it is not of the great public that the writer thinks, but of this single debonair reader. It is for those of like manners and feelings that these chapters have been written, Gentle Reader, out in the unknown, be gentle still! Whoever and wherever you may be, when you open these leaves remember your old kindliness and forbear to criticize too harshly the pen that would help you on the way across the Stepping Stones to Happiness.

Never birds sang as I heard them.

The Use of the Present. It was in one of the long journeys across Texas that the train stopping at a water-tank was boarded by a half dozen children of the village that had grown up about the station, children to whom the train came like a herald and messenger from the great outside world. Read more about their journey . . . .

• A Mirage
• The Present Time
• The Uses of This World
• Advancing Years
• Looking Backward
• Disenchantment
• Illusions
• Idle Regrets

Dry Shod. For there are few joys of life comparable with that of expectancy, especially the expectancy of people of imagination. This is a singular fact, and speaks largely for the spiritual side of our nature; for few of the joys of realization and possession ever quite reach the heights of hope and imagination. Expectancy is, however, a much more emphatic thing than hope, since it signifies certainty, where the other is uncertain signifies assurance and right, signifies hope with the seal of authority upon it. We hope for many things without a shadow of ground for our hoping; we only expect that which we feel is sure to come. And what a pleasure is there in the expectancy, calling upon senses that know no sating! As the world within the looking-glass is an ideal world; as the scene in the Claude Lorraine glass is transfigured; as any commonplace thing, when reflected out of the actual and tangible, takes on an aura of grace and refinement so expectancy gives us sensations just beyond reality, refines the real and idealizes facts.

• An Ideal World
• A Child's Discovery
• The Surprise
• Mrs. Mulgrave's Story
• The Other Side of the Bureau
  

A Pause By the Way. We should do poorly with our content with life as it is, if we did not find one of the strongest and firmest of our stepping-stones as we cross the stream to our shining goal of happiness, in the habit of self-reliance and self-reverence. Read more . . .

• St Augustine's Dream
• The Spiritual Mind
• Reticence
• Real Troubles
• The Armor of Patience
• A Mutual Dependence
• Man's Majesty
• Miss Moggaride's Provider 

The same mother's knee.

A Family Tree. When one has made up one's mind to live in the present and to find a great joy in expectancy, that is to foster a sunny disposition and cease regretting the past, and when one is entrenched in a firm self-respect, one turns first for happiness to the family relation. God setteth the solitary in families is a text that we all receive with grateful hearts, and the more so the older we
grow. The homely saying that blood is thicker than water is one of the truths that it is usually held there is no gainsaying, and it is believed that it contains, as many another law does, the concentrated wisdom of years. Yet we have always doubted if, after all, it were natural feeling that predominated among us so much as family feeling, if one can discriminate between the two; for natural feeling is shared with brutes and savages, but the other belongs truly to those that are bound in the bonds of blood-relationship. The brute shows none of it, except in relation to the mate, and not always then, and for a very brief season to the offspring.
      The love of brothers and sisters, of grandparents and cousins, does not distinguish savages, many of whom are known to leave their old and sick to lonely and speedy death But the moment that civilization advances at all, families and clans become established, the blood that flows in kindred veins begins to be recognized and felt. Some of this sentiment might possibly be traced to the sense of possession, for although we do not reason it out in corresponding words, we are aware of it perhaps through those dark senses that are to the others what the dark rays of the spectrum are to the seven colors these people are ours, are in some degree a part of ourselves, certainly of our lives; their conduct is an honor or a dishonor to us; we are forced to think of them, and it flatters our self-love to think well of them ; what they are it is possible that we, of the same descent, may be also, and this little thread of pride feels a pull at the third generation

• Household Associations
• Plutarch's Advice
• Love of Ancestors
• Family Traditions
• The Coat of Arms
  

A Home in Town. Having our personal condition satisfactory, in the determination to make the most of the present, and to surround ourselves with the atmosphere of hope and of self-respect, we find our next stepping-stone to happiness in the possession of a home. There are many of us who, on account of our work, our business, or our family relations, or from a long habit of generations of our people, must have our home in the city, and so prefer it.

• Owning the House
• Moving
• Inside the House
• The Vacation
• Social Pleasure
• Advantages of Town Life
• City Children
• Music at Home
• The Piano-Forte
• Music Abroad
• The Opera
• Shopping
• The Street Car
• The Cheery Town
• The City Parlor
• Old China
• The Spinning-Wheel
• The Distaff
• The Spinster
• The Adventures of a Pound of Cotton
• Society
• The Gay Season
• City Window Gardens
• A City Window Garden

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