From: the.wise.one@abel.co.uk   
      
   Life is Wonderful   
      
   by Anton Chekhov   
   1885   
      
      
   Life is quite an unpleasant business, but it is not so very hard to make   
   it wonderful.  For which purpose it is not enough that you should win   
   200,000 roubles in a lottery, or receive the order of the White Eagle,   
   or marry a beautiful woman -- all these blessings are transitory and are   
   liable to become a habit.  But to feel continuously happy, even in   
   moments of distress and sorrow, the following is needed:   
      
   (a) To be satisfied with your present state; and   
      
   (b) To rejoice in the knowledge that things might have been much worse.   
      
        When your matches suddenly go off in your pocket, rejoice and offer   
   thanks to heaven that your pocket is not a gunpowder magazine.   
      
        When your relations come to pay you a visit during your holiday in   
   the country, don't turn pale, but exclaim triumphantly: "How very lucky   
   it is not the police!"   
      
        If you get a splinter in your finger, rejoice that it is not in   
   your eye.   
      
        If your wife and sister-in-law practises scales on the piano, don't   
   lose your temper, but be grateful for the joy that you are listening to   
   music, and not to the howling of jackals, or to a cat's concert.   
      
        Rejoice that you are not a tram-horse, nor a Koch bacillus, nor a   
   trichina, nor a pig, nor an ass, nor a bear lead by a gipsy, nor a bug.   
      
        Rejoice that at the moment you are not a prisoner in the dock; that   
   you are not interviewing your creditors, and that you have not to   
   arrange the question of fees with Turba, the editor.   
      
        If you can live in a place not so remote as Siberia, can't you feel   
   pleased at the idea, that by mere chance you might have been deported there?   
      
        If you have pain in one tooth, rejoice that it is not all your   
   teeth that are aching.   
      
        Rejoice that you can afford not to read the 'Daily Citizen'; that   
   you have not to drive a sewage cart, nor to be married to three women   
   simultaneously.   
      
        If you are removed to a police cell, jump for joy that it is not   
   the fiery gehenna that you have been taken to.   
      
        If you are flogged with a birch rod, kick your legs in rapture, and   
   exclaim: "How very happy I am that it is not nettles I am being flogged   
   with!"   
      
        If your wife has been unfaithful to you, rejoice that she has   
   betrayed merely yourself, and not your country.   
      
      
   [* This piece appeared in the original in No. 17 of the humorous paper   
   'Oskolki' in 1885, when Chekhov, then only twenty-five, was being paid   
   literally in farthings for his contributions. 'Life is Wonderful' has   
   not been included in Chekhov's collected works. *]   
      
      
   from:   
   "Plays and Stories by Anton Tchekhov"   
   translated by S.S. Koteliansky   
   Everyman Library #941   
   J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London, 1937   
   pages 354-355   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)