A Private History of Happiness

A Private History of Happiness Read Online Free PDF

Book: A Private History of Happiness Read Online Free PDF
Author: George Myerson
admire the cold but burnished beauties of the prospect and felt the magnificence of the scene.
    I found George up, though I little expected it when I turned a corner to take a look at his window. I had little thought of seeing a light there at that time of the night —I ran upstairs, opened the door an inch and inquired if Mr. Gibbs lived there. Then we laughed ourselves to death and disturbed the neighbours. Mr. Chambers in the backroom inquired who the Devil had come, and being told, said, he “thought t’was him.”
    Breakfasted there and told stories till I thought I had told too many [. . .]
    When I turned my face homeward I felt the inconvenience of 3 pairs of pantaloons, 2 of stockings, 2 shirts and 2 great coats.
    Now I think my ride too good a one to grumble about.

    George Cutler had come to the town of Litchfield in Connecticut to study law with Judge Tapping Reeve, after graduating from Yale University in 1816. This was the first formal law school course in the country, and Cutler was admitted fully to the American Bar in 1821. Meanwhile, he had a number of friends taking the same course. There was a girls’ academy nearby, too, and so Litchfield was full of young people like Cutler and his friend and fellow student George Gibbs,with whom he shared this fine breakfast recorded on a cold November morning.
    George Cutler loved Litchfield. He liked the people and the setting, as another entry (of the same year) in his diary shows: “Aug. 18 (Evening). Miss Talmadge here is certainly elegant; there is no such woman in New Haven. Litchfield is certainly an extraordinary place for beauty. The mountain air gives them the expression of health.” At the end of September, he had taken the oath as an attorney. It was a successful time.
    This very early morning at the end of November gave him the special moment to seal his happiness. He was already in a good mood when he set off, having had an early breakfast, with his horse equally lively. He felt as if nature was staging a grand performance for him, with shooting stars and moonbeams and music from the crowing cocks.
    But he became even happier when he met his friend. He arrived at the lodging house where George Gibbs resided, and to his surprise saw a light in Gibbs’s room. Eagerly, he “ran upstairs” and, jokingly, asked formally for “Mr. Gibbs.” Then their peals of laughter rang out loud in the silence. It was a wonderful feeling. They also had the pleasure of annoying the man in the backroom.
    It was as if they owned this dawn. George Cutler had his second breakfast, full of gossip and chatter this time.
    What made this moment so unique was the contrast with the solemn “magnificence” of the night on his way there. It made him appreciate the warmth of human friendship, having just experienced alone the overwhelming expanse of the universe. Here, at the lodging house, breakfast was a happy time for friends together.

The Freedom of Dancing through the Night
    Robert Burns, poet and farmer, writing a letter to a friend
    SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS • JUNE 30, 1787
    On our return, at a Highland gentleman’s hospitable mansion, we fell in with a merry party, and danced till the ladies left us, at three in the morning. Our dancing was none of the French or English insipid formal movements; the ladies sung Scotch songs like angels, at intervals; then we flew at the Bab at the bowster, Tullochgorum and Loch Erroch side [Highland dances], etc. like midges sporting in the sun, or craws [crows] prognosticating a storm [. . .] When the dear lasses left us, we ranged round the bowl till good-fellow hour of six; except a few minutes that we went out to pay our devotions to the glorious lamp of day peering over the towering top of Benlomond [mountain]. We all kneeled; our worthy landlord’s son held the bowl; each man a full glass in his hand; and I, as priest, repeated some rhyming nonsense, like Thomas a Rhymer’s prophecies.

    Robert Burns, now regarded as the national
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