Three Peach Stones

R. Duncan

1．Observe a child; any one will do. You will see that not a day passes in which he does not find something or other to make him happy. Then look at a man; any one of us will do. You will notice that weeks and months can pass in which day is greeted with nothing more than resignation, and endure with every polite indifference. But it is true that they seldom smile and even then a man can not smile like a child, for a child smiles with his eyes, whereas a man smiles with his lips alone.

2．It would seem that happiness is something to do with simplicity, and that it is the ability to extract pleasure from the simplest things--such as a peach stone, for instance.

3．It is obvious that it is nothing to do with success. For Sir Henry Stewart was certainly successful. It is twenty years ago since he came down to our village from London. He was a barrister. And the village followed his brilliant career with something almost amounting to paternal pride. But he took his success as a child did his medicine. And not one of his achievements brought even a ghost of a smile to his tired eyes.

4．I asked him one day, soon after he'd retired to potter about his garden, what it was like to achieve all one's ambitions. Then he said: "The only value in achieving one's ambition is that you then realize that they are not worth achieving."

5．I recall for yesterday, I was passing his house. I suddenly heard a shout of sheer joy come from the other side of the wall. There stood Sir Henry doing nothing less than a tribal① war dance of sheer unashamed ecstasy (h_________ and e_________). "Come and see, Jan. Look! I have done it at last! I have done it at last!"

6．There he was, holding a small box of earth in his had. I observed three tiny shoots out of it.

7．"Peach stones", he replied. "I've always wanted to make peach stones grow, even since I was a child, when I used to take them home after a party. But now at last I have done it, and, what's more, I had only three stones, and there you are, one, two, three shoots," he counted.

 ① tribal adj. 部落的，种族的