The Hillyars and the Burtons by Henry Kingsley

AND so my father had struck his last stroke at the anvil forever. One seldom feels joy at times of excitement. Johnson says, and sticks to it, that no man is ever happy but when he is drunk. Without going so far as that, one may say that happiness is mainly prospective and retrospective. How often can one remember to have said, "How happy I am," since childhood. Then I have been so happy that I could not eat. I particularly remember one summer Sunday that my father had helped me to the brown outside of the roast beef,--my favorite piece,--but that I was so happy in my anticipation of the afternoon's delight that I could n't eat it, and carried it out with me in a paper. I know that this first burst of good fortune is not one of the times I look back on in life as the pleasantest; the disturbance of old habits was too great. For one thing, all the children had to be sent off to boarding- school at Pitt, sixty miles away. Our Fred ran away the first month, and, after incredible adventures, was brought home by the blacks. The parting was a very sad business indeed; and my mother, in the heat of her feelings, boldly wished all the money at the deuse. Yes, there was a still sad house that evening; and I, coming across from my house in the twilight to see the dear old folks, found that they had wandered hand in hand into the forge, and were sitting there on a bench, side by side, silent.

I tried to slip away; but they had seen me, and made me come in and sit beside them. I felt a great disinclination to speak, and I was glad that my father spoke first.