Bones and I by G.J. Whyte-Melville — Read

We are all looking for it; shall we ever find it? Can it be cultivated in hothouses by Scotch head-gardeners with high wages and Doric accent? or shall we come upon it accidentally, peeping through green bulrushes, lurking in tangled woodlands, or perched high on the mountain's crest, far above the region of grouse and heather, where the ptarmigan folds her wings amongst the silt and shingle in the clefts of the bare grey rock? We climb for it, we dive for it, we creep for it on our belly, like the serpent, eating dust to any amount in the process; but do we ever succeed in plucking such a specimen as, according to our natures, we can joyfully place in our hats for ostentation or hide under our waistcoats for true love?

Do you remember Sir Walter Scott's humorous poem called the "Search after Happiness"? Do you remember how that Eastern monarch who strove to appropriate the shirt of a contented man visited every nation in turn till he came to Ireland, the native soil indeed of all the shamrock tribe; how his myrmidons incontinently assaulted one of the "bhoys" whose mirthful demeanour raised their highest hopes, and how