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CHAPTER XV
THE HAPPY DAYS
This is a troublesome world enough, but thanks to that mitigating fate
which now and again interferes to our advantage, there do come to most
of us times and periods of existence which, if they do not quite
fulfil all the conditions of ideal happiness, yet go near enough to
that end to permit in after days of our imagining that they did so. I
say to most of us, but in doing so I allude chiefly to those classes
commonly known as the "upper," by which is understood those who have
enough bread to put into their mouths and clothes to warm them; those,
too, who are not the present subjects of remorseless and hideous
ailments, who are not daily agonised by the sight of their famished
offspring; who are not doomed to beat out their lives against the
madhouse bars, or to see their hearts' beloved and their most
cherished hope wither towards that cold space from whence no message
comes. For such unfortunates, and for their million-numbered kin upon
the globe--the victims of war, famine, slave trade, oppression, usury,
over-population, and the curse of competition, the rays of light must
be few indeed; few and far between, only just enough to save them from
utter hopelessness.
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