About 18 months ago, my father was in the hospital recovering from a major lung operation. My mother had recently passed away, and my father had taken the loss of his partner of 55 years very hard and had lost interest in life.

Trying to get him to eat each day was quite a chore as he didn’t want anything. The one thing, however, that he would ask us to bring him was ice-cream.

One evening to our surprise, he refused to eat the ice-cream, so I placed it in a staff room freezer. A little while later, my son decided he wanted it, so I fetched it for him.

As I passed another ward, a woman asked, “Are there more? Where that came from?” When I explained the situation, she apologized. She then said that she had cancer and could eat very little other than the occasional ice-cream.

The next evening, I decided to buy two ice-cream. On the way to Dad’s room, I stopped in at the sick woman’s room, and offered her the ice-cream I’d bought for her. She was totally stunned that I had thought of her, and accepted the gift with tears in her eyes. I spoke with her for a few minutes, explaining what was happening in my family and listened to her similar story of pain and suffering. It was apparent that she did not have many visitors, and the ice-cream and our short chat meant a great deal to her.

I repeated the gesture a few days later, and this time was rewarded with a huge hug.

I never even thought to ask her name, and never saw her again, but it made me realize that an act of kindness can be more rewarding when you give it, rather than receive it.

Not long ago when I had a dinner party, a guest noticed the gravy boat (船形酱汁壶) — a piece of china, “Is it a heirloom (传家宝)?” The boat is very old, matches nothing else, and has a V-shaped cut on it. But it is the one I will keep forever.

Our history together began fifty years ago when I was seven. That December the river started to rise. We worked hard against the disaster and even kept a rowboat downstairs. My mother carefully packed the china in the study upstairs because it’d been her mother’s and was valuable to her. She told me, “You must treasure the things people you love have treasured. It keeps you in touch with them.” But then I didn’t really understand her concern.

The water rose higher. One night, the floor of the study fell through and the china was on the first floor under the rising river. The loss really broke her heart. That night she sat on the top of the stairs and cried.

The next morning I could tell how bad she still felt. Suddenly I saw the rowboat —yes, I could fish for the china. I put a hook (钩) onto a line, let it down until I felt it hit bottom and slowly moved the rowboat back and forth, pulling my line, but time after time I pulled the line up empty.

When we had to leave as the water poured in, I tried for the last time. Suddenly I felt something and raised my catch. The gravy boat! The moment I took it out in front of my mother, she was in tears of joy.

It was just then that I realized how deeply that old gravy boat connected me to the people and places of my past, tying me to my mother as well as her life, her joy and her love.

Happiness is like a pebble(卵石)dropped into a pool to set in motion an ever-widening circle of ripples. As Stevenson has said, being happy is a duty.

【小题1】. Happy people are happy for all sorts of reasons. The key is not wealth or physical well-being, since we find beggars, invalids and so-called failures, who are extremely happy.

Being happy is a sort of unexpected dividend(额外收获). But staying happy is an accomplishment, a triumph of soul and character.【小题2】. It is, indeed, a duty to others and us.

【小题3】. It causes people to shrink away from the sufferer. He soon finds himself alone, miserable and embittered. There is, however, a cure so simple as to seem, at first glance, ridiculous; if you don’t feel happy, pretend to be!

It works.【小题4】, you attract them. You discover how deeply rewarding it is to be the center of wider and wider circles of good will.

Then the make-believe becomes a reality.【小题5】, and can forget yourself in being of service to others.

Being happy, once it is realized as a duty and established as a habit, opens doors into unimaginable gardens thronged with grateful friends.