CHEERFULNESS AS LIFE POWER: The Unseen Force Behind Success and Prosperity - Orison Swett Marden (1899) - SECRETS OF SUCCESS: Masters’ Greatest Wisdom

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Cheerfulness as a life power by oars and Sweat Marten,
eighteen ninety nine a foreword. The soul consuming and friction
wearing tendency of this hurrying, grasping, competing age is the
excuse for this booklet. Is it not an absolute necessity
to get rid of all irritants, of everything which worries

(00:20):
and frets, and which brings discord into so many lives?
Cheerfulness has a wonderful lubricating power. It lengthens the life
of human machinery, as lubricants lengthen the life of inert machinery.
Life's delicate bearing should not be carelessly ground away for
mere lack of oil. What is needed is a habit
of cheerfulness to enjoy every day as we go along,

(00:43):
not to fret and stew all the weak, and then
expect to make up for its Sunday or on some holiday.
It is not a question of mirth so much as
of cheerfulness, not alone that which accompanies laughter, but serenity,
a calm, sweet soul, contentment, and inward peace. Are there
not multitudes of people who have the blues, who yet
wish well to their neighbours? They would say kind words

(01:06):
and make the world happier. But they haven't the time
to lead them to look on the sunny side of things,
and to take a little time every day to speak
pleasant words. Is the message of the hour, or as
in Sweat Marten, cheerfulness as a life power one what
Vanderbilt paid for twelve laughs. William K. Vanderbilt, when he

(01:29):
last visited Constantinople one day, invited Cocoln, the elder so
celebrated for his powers as a mimic, who happened to
be in the city at the time, to give a
private recital on board his yacht lying in the Bosphorus.
Coqueoln spoke three of his monologues. A few days afterwards,
Coquolun received the following memorandum from the millionaire. You have

(01:50):
brought tears to our eyes and laughter to our hearts.
Since all philosophers are agreed that laughing is preferable to weeping,
your account with me stands thus for tears six times
six hundred dollars for laughter twelve times two thousand, four hundred.
Kindly acknowledge receipt of enclosed check. I find nonsense singularly refreshing,

(02:15):
said Talleyrand There is good philosophy in the saying laugh
and grow fat. If everybody knew the power of laughter
as a health tonic and life prolonger, the tinge of
sadness which now clouds the American face would largely disappear,
and many physicians would find their occupation gone. The power
of laughter was given us to serve a wise purpose

(02:36):
in our economy. It is nature's device for exercising the
internal organs and giving us pleasure at the same time.
Laughter begins in the lungs and diaphragm, setting the liver, stomach,
and other internal organs into a quick, jelly like vibration,
which gives a pleasant sensation and exercise almost equal to
that of horseback riding. During digestion, the movements of the

(02:59):
stomach are similar to churning. Every time you take a
full breath or when you calculate well, the diaphragm descends
and gives the stomach an extra squeeze and shakes it
Frequent Laughing sets the stomach to dancing, hurrying up the
digestive process. The heart beats faster and sends the blood
bounding through the body. There is not says doctor green One,

(03:22):
remotest corner or little inlet of the minute blood vessels
of the human body that does not feel some wavelet
from the convulsion's occasioned by a good hearty laugh. In
medical terms, it stimulates the vasomotor centers and the spasmodic
contraction of the blood vessels causes the blood to flow quickly.
Laughter accelerates the respiration and gives warmth and glow to

(03:43):
the whole system. It brightens the eye, increases the perspiration,
expands the chest, forces the poisoned air from the least
used lung cells, and tends to restore that exquisite poise
or balance, which we call health, which results from the
harmonious action of all the functions of the body. This
delicate poise, which may be destroyed by a sleepless night,

(04:04):
a piece of bad news, by grief or anxiety, is
often wholly restored by a good hearty laugh. There is
therefore sound sense in the caption cheerfulness as a life power,
relating as it does to the physical life as well
as the mental and moral, and what we may call
the laugh cure is based upon principles recognized as sound

(04:27):
by the medical profession. So literally true is the Hebrew
proverb that a merry heart doeth good like a medicine.
Mirth is God's medicine, said doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes. Everybody
ought to bathe in it. Grim Care, moroseness, anxiety, all
the rust of life ought to be scoured off by
the oil of mirth. Elsewhere, he says, if you are

(04:49):
making choice of a physician, be sure you get one
with a cheerful and serene countenance. Is not a jolly
physician of greater service than his pills. Doctor Marshall Hall
frequent prescribed cheerfulness for his patience, saying that it is
better than anything to be obtained at the apothecaries. In
Western New York, Doctor Burdick was known as the laughing Doctor.

(05:11):
He always presented the happiest kind of a face, and
his good humor was contagious. He dealt sparingly in drugs,
yet was very successful. The London Lancet, the most eminent
medical journal in the world, gives the following scientific testimony
to the value of jovialty. This power of good spirits
is a matter of high moment to the sick and

(05:33):
weakly to the former. It may mean the ability to
survive to the latter the possibility of outliving or living
in spite of a disease. It is therefore of the
greatest importance to cultivate the highest and most buoyant frame
of mind, which the conditions will admit. The same energy
which takes the form of mental activity is vital to

(05:55):
the work of the organism. Mental influences affect the system,
and a joy by spirit not only relieves pain, but
increases the momentum of life in the body. Doctor Ray,
superintendent of Butler Hospital for the Insane, says in one
of his reports, a hearty laugh is more desirable for
mental health than any exercise of the reasoning faculties. Grief, anxiety,

(06:18):
and fear are great enemies of human life. A depressed, sour,
melancholy soul, A life which has ceased to believe in
its own sacredness, its own power, its own mission. A
life which sinks into querulous egotism or vegetating aimlessness has
become crippled and useless. We should fight against every influence
which tends to depress the mind, as we would against

(06:40):
a temptation to crime. It is undoubtedly true that as
a rule, the mind has power to lengthen the period
of youthful and mature strength and beauty, preserving and renewing
physical life by a stalwart mental health. I read the
other day of a man in a neighboring city who
was given up to die. His relatives were sent for,
and they watched at his bedside. But an old acquaintance

(07:03):
who called to see him, assured him smilingly that he
was all right and would soon be well. He talked
in such a strain that the sick man was forced
to laugh, and the effort so roused his system that
he rallied, and he was soon well again. Was it
not Shakespeare who said that a light heart lives long?
The San Francisco Argonaut says that a woman in mill Pites,

(07:25):
a victim of almost crushing sorrow, despondency, indigestion, insomnia, and
kindred ills, determined to throw off the gloom which was
making life so heavy a burden to her, and established
a rule that she would laugh at least three times
a day, whether occasion was presented or not. So she
trained herself to laugh heartily at the least provocation, and
would retire to her room and make merry by herself.

(07:48):
She was soon in excellent health and buoyant spirits. Her
home became a sunny, cheerful abode. It was said by
one who knew this woman well, and who wrote an
account of the case for a popular magazine, that at
first her husband and children were amused at her, and
while they respected her determination because of the grief she bore,
they did not enter into the spirit of the plan.

(08:09):
But after a while, said this woman to me with
a smile. Only yesterday the funny part of the idea
struck my husband, and he began to laugh every time
we spoke of it, And when he came home, he
would ask me if I had had my regular laughs,
and he would laugh when he asked the question, and
again when I answered it. My children, then very young,

(08:30):
thought mamma's notion very queer, but they laughed at it
just the same. Gradually, my children told other children, and
they told their parents. My husband spoke of it to
our friends, and I rarely met one of them, but
he or she would laugh and ask me, how many
of your laughs have you had to day? Naturally, they
laughed when they asked, and of course that set me laughing.

(08:53):
When I formed this apparently strange habit. I was weighed
down with sorrow, and my rules simply lifted me out
of it. I had suffered the most acute indigestion for years.
I have not known what it is. Headaches were a
daily dread. For over six years, I have not had
a single pain in the head. My home seems different
to me, and I feel a thousand times more interest

(09:15):
in its work. My husband is a changed man. My
children are called the girls who are always laughing, And
altogether my rule has proved an inspiration which has worked wonders.
The Queen of Fashion, however, says that we must never
laugh out loud. But since the same tyrannical mistress kills
people by corsets, indulges in cosmetics, and is out all

(09:37):
night at dancing parties, and in China pinches up the
women's feet, I place much less confidence in her views
upon the laugh cure for human woes. Yet, in all
civilized countries it is a fundamental principle of refined manners
not to be ill timed and unreasonably noisy and boisterous
in mirth. One who is wise will never violate the
proprieties of well bred people. Yet says a wholesome writer

(10:01):
upon health, we should do something more than to simply
cultivate a cheerful, hopeful spirit. We should cultivate a spirit
of mirthfulness that is not only easily pleased and smiling,
but that indulges in hearty, hilarious laughter. And if this
faculty is not well marked in our organization, we should
cultivate it, being well assured that hearty, body shaking laughter
will do us good. Ordinary good looks depend on one

(10:24):
sense of humor, a merry heart mock of a cheerful countenance.
Joyfulness keeps the heart and face young. A good laugh
makes us better friends with ourselves and everybody around us,
and puts us into closer touch with what is best
and brightest in our lot in life. Physiology tells the
story the great sympathetic nerves are closely allied, and when

(10:46):
one set carries bad news to the head, the nerves
reaching the stomach are affected. Indigestion comes on, and one's
countenance becomes doleful. Laugh when you can. It is a
cheap medicine. Is a philosophy not well understood. The eminent
surgeon Chavasse says that we ought to begin with the

(11:06):
babies and trained children to habits of mirth. Encourage your
child to be merry and laugh aloud. A good, hearty
laugh expands the chest and makes the blood bound merrily along.
Commend me to a good laugh, not to a little
snickering laugh, but to one that will sound right through
the house. It will not only do your child good,
but will be a benefit to all who hear, and

(11:28):
be an important means of driving the blues away from
a dwelling. Merriment is very catching and spreads in a
remarkable manner, few being able to resist its contagion. A
hearty laugh is delightful harmony. Indeed, it is the best
of all music. Children without hilarity, says an eminent author,
will never amount to much. Trees without blossoms will never

(11:50):
bear fruit. Helfland, physician to the King of Prussia, commends
the ancient custom of jesters at the king's table, whose
quips and cranks would keep the com company in a roar.
Did not, like Curtis, set up the god of laughter
in the Spartan eating halls. There is no table sauce
like laughter at meals. It is the great enemy of dyspepsia.

(12:12):
How wise are the words of the acute champer, that
the most completely lost of all days is the one
in which we have not laughed. A crown for making
the king laugh was one of the items of expense
which the historian Hume found in a manuscript of King
Edward the Second. It is a good thing to laugh
at any rate, said Dryden the poet. And if a

(12:33):
straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness.
I live, said Laurence Sterne, one of the greatest of
English humorists, in a constant endeavor to fence against the
infirmities of ill health and other evils by mirth. I
am persuaded that every time a man smiles, but much
more so when he laughs, it adds something to his
fragment of life. Give me an honest laugher, said Sir

(12:56):
Walter Scott, and he was himself one of the happiest
men in the world, with a kind word and pleasant smile,
for every one and everybody loved him. How much lies
in laughter, exclaimed the critic Carlyle. It is the cipher
key wherewith we decipher the whole man. Some men were
an everlasting barren simper in the smile of others lies

(13:17):
the cold glitter as of ice. The fewest are able
to laugh what can be called laughing, but only sniff
and titter and snicker from the throat outward, or at
least produce some whiffing husky cacination, as if they were
laughing through wool of none. Such comes good, the power
to laugh, to cease work, and begin to frolic, and
make merry, and forgetfulness of all the conflict of life,

(13:39):
says Campbell, Morgan is a divine bestowment upon man. Happy.
Then is the man who may well laugh to himself
over his good luck. Who can answer the old question
how old are you? By Sambo's reply, if you reckon
by the years, saw I s twenty five. But if
he goes by the fun eyes ad I guess eyes

(13:59):
a hundred? Why don't you laugh? From the independent? Why
don't you laugh, young man, when troubles come? Instead of
sitting round so sour and glum, you cannot have all
play and sunshine every day when troubles come, I say,
why don't you laugh? Why don't you laugh? Tea will

(14:21):
ever help to soothe the aches and pains? No road
in life is smooth. There's many an unseen bump, and
many a hidden stump o'er which you'll have to jump.
Why don't you laugh? Why don't you laugh? Don't let
your spirits wilt. Don't sit and cry because the milk
you've spilt, if you would mend it now pray, let

(14:41):
me tell you how. Just milk another cow. Why don't
you laugh? Why don't you laugh and make us all
laugh too, and keep us mortals all from getting blue.
A laugh will always win. If you can't laugh, just grin.
Come on, let's all join in. Why don't you laugh? Two?
The Cure for Americanitis. Prince Wolkenski, during a visit to

(15:05):
this country, declared that business is the alpha and omega
of American life. There is no pleasure, no joy, no satisfaction.
There is no standard except that of profit. There is
no other country where they speak of a man as
worth so many dollars. In other countries they live to
enjoy life. Here they exist for business. A Boston merchant

(15:29):
corroborated this statement by saying he was anxious all day
about making money, and worried all night for fear he
should lose what he had made in the United States.
A distinguished traveler once said, there is everywhere comfort but
no joy. The ambition of getting more and fretting over
what is lost absorbed life. Every man we meet looks

(15:49):
as if he'd gone out to borrow trouble, with plenty
of it on hand, set a French lady upon arriving
in New York. The Americans are the best fed, the
best clad, and the best house peace people in the world,
says another witness. But they are the most anxious. They
hug possible calamity to their breasts. I question if care
and doubt ever wrote their names so legibly on the

(16:10):
faces of any other population, says Emerson. Old age begins
in the nursery. How quickly we Americans exhaust life? With
what panting haste we pursue everything. Every man you meet
seems to be late for an appointment. Hurry is stamped
in the wrinkles of the national face. We are men
of action. We go faster and faster as the years

(16:33):
go by, speeding our machinery to the utmost bent forms.
Prematurely gray hair, restlessness, and discontent are characteristic of our
age and people. We earn our bread but cannot digest it,
and our over stimulated nerves soon become irritated, and touchiness follows,
so fatal to a business man, and so annoying in society.

(16:56):
It is not work that kills men, says Beecher, It
is worry. Work is healthy. You can hardly put more
on a man than he can bear, But worry is
rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys
the machinery, but friction. It is not so much the
great sorrows, the great burdens, the great hardships, the great

(17:17):
calamities that cloud over the sunshine of life, as the
little petty vexations, insignificant anxieties and fear, the little daily dyings,
which render our lives unhappy and destroy our mental elasticity
without advancing our life work one inch. Anxiety never yet
bridged any chasm. What asks doctor George W. Jacoby in

(17:40):
an Evening Post interview, is the ultimate physical effect of worry?
Why the same as that of a fatal bullet wound
or sword thrust. Worry kills as surely, though not so quickly,
as ever gun or dagger did. And more people have
died in the last century from sheer worry than have
been killed in battle. Doctor Jacobi is one of the

(18:01):
foremost of American brain doctors. The investigations of the neurologists,
he says, have laid bare no secret of nature in
recent years more startling and interesting than the discovery that
worry kills. This is the final, up to date word.
Not only is it known, resumes the great neurologist, counting
off his words as it were on his fingertips, that

(18:24):
worry kills, but the most minute details of its murderous
methods are familiar to modern scientists. It is a common
belief of those who have made a special study of
the science of brain diseases that hundreds of deaths attributed
to other causes each year are due simply to worry.
In plain untechnical language, worry works its irreparable injury through

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certain cells of the brain life. The insidious inroads upon
the system can be best likened to the constant falling
of drops of water in one spot in the brain.
It is the insistent, never lost idea, the single constant
thought centered upon one subject, which, in the course of
time destroys the brain cells. The healthy brain can cope

(19:05):
with occasional worry. It is the iteration and reiteration of
disquieting thoughts which the cells of the brain cannot successfully combat.
The mechanical effect of worry is much the same as
if the skull were laid bare and the brain exposed
to the action of a little hammer beating continually upon it,
day after day, until the membranes are disintegrated and the
normal functions disabled. The maddening thought that will not be downed,

(19:28):
the haunting, ever present idea that is not or cannot
be banished by a supreme effort of the will, is
the theoretical hammer which diminishes the vitality of the sensitive
nerve organisms, the minuteness of which makes them visible to
the eye only under a powerful microscope. The worry, the thought,
the single idea, grows upon one as time goes on,
until the worry victim cannot throw it off. Through this

(19:52):
one set or area of cells is effected. The cells
are intimately connected, joined together by little fibers, and they,
in turn our enclose relationship with the cells of the
other parts of the brain. Worry is itself a species
of monomania. No mental attitude is more disastrous to personal achievement,
personal happiness, and personal usefulness in the world than worry

(20:15):
and its twin brother, despondency. The remedy for the evil
lies in training the will to cast off cares and
seek a change of occupation when the first warning is
sounded by nature and intellectual lassitude. Relaxation is the certain
foe of worry, and don't fret one of the healthiest
of maxims. In a life of constant worrying, we are

(20:36):
as much behind the times as if we were to
go back to use the first steam engines that wasted
ninety percent of the energy of the coal, instead of
having an electric dynamo that utilizes ninety percent of the power.
Some people waste a large percentage of their energy in
fretting and stewing, in useless anxiety, in scolding, in complaining
about the weather and the perversity of inanimate things. Others

(20:58):
convert nearly all of their energy into power and moral sunshine.
He who has learned the true art of living will
not waste his energies in friction, which accomplishes nothing but
merely grinds out the machinery of life. It must be
relegated to the debating societies to determine which is the
worse a nervous man or a worrying woman. I'm awfully

(21:20):
worried this morning, said one woman. What is it Why
I thought of something to worry about last night, and
now I can't remember it. A famous actress once said,
worry is the foe of all beauty. She might have added,
it is the foe to all health. It seems so
heartless in me if I do not worry about my children,

(21:42):
said one mother. Women nurse their troubles as they do
their babies. Troubles grow larger, said Lady Holland. By nursing.
The white Knight, who carried about a mouse trap lest
he be troubled with mice upon his journeys, was not
unlike those who anticipate their burdens. He grieves, says Seneca,
more than is necessary. Who grieves before it is necessary?

(22:07):
My children set a dying man. During my long life,
I have had a great many troubles, most of which
never happened. A prominent business man in Philadelphia said that
his father worried for twenty five years over an anticipated
misfortune which never arrived. We try to grasp too much
of life at once, since we think of it as
a whole instead of living one day at a time.

(22:29):
Life is a mosaic, and each tiny piece must be
cut and set with skill, first one piece, then another.
A clock would be of no use as a timekeeper
if it should become discouraged and come to a standstill
by calculating its work a year ahead, as the clock
did in Jane Taylor's fable, It is not the troubles
of today, but those of tomorrow and next week and

(22:50):
next year, that whiten our heads, wrinkle our faces, and
bring us to a standstill. There is such a thing,
said Uncle Eban, as too much foresight. People get to
figuring what might happen year after next, and let the
fire go out and catch their death of cold right
where they are nervous. Prostration is seldom the result of

(23:11):
present trouble or work, but of work and trouble anticipated.
Mental exhaustion comes to those who look ahead and climb
mountains before reaching them. Resolutely, build a wall about today,
and live within the enclosure. The past may have been hard, sad,
or wrong, but it is over. Why not take a

(23:31):
turn about? Instead of worrying over unforeseen misfortune, set out
with all your soul to rejoice in the unforeseen blessings
of all your coming days. I find the gayest castles
in the air that were ever piled, says Emerson, Far
better for comfort and for use than the dungeons in
the air that are daily dug and caverned out by grumbling,
discontented people. What is this world but as you take it?

(23:55):
Thackeray calls the world a looking glass that gives back
the reflection of one's own face. Frown at it and
it will look sourly upon you. Laugh at it, and
it is a jolly companion. There is no use in talking,
said a woman. Every time I move, I vow I'll
never move again. Such neighbors as I get in with

(24:16):
seems as though they grow worse and worse. Indeed, replied
her caller, perhaps you take the worst neighbor with you
when you move. In the sudden thunder storm of Independence Day,
says a news correspondent, we were struck by the contrast
between two women, each of whom had had some trying
experience with the weather. One came through the rain and

(24:37):
hail to take refuge at the railway station under the
swaying and uncertain shelter of an escorting man's umbrella. Her
skirts were soaked to the knees, her pink ribbons were limp.
The purple of the flowers on her hat ran in
streaks down the white silk. And yet though she was
a poor girl, in her holiday finery must have been
relatively costly, she made the best of it with a

(24:58):
smile and cheerful word. The other was well sheltered, but
she took the disappointment of her hopes and the possibility
of a little spattering from a leaky window with frowns
and fault finding. Cries little miss Fret in a very
great pet. I hate this warm weather. It's horrid to tan.
It scorches my nose, and it blisters my toes. And

(25:19):
wherever I go I must carry a fan, chirps little
miss laugh. Why I couldn't tell half the fun I
am having this bright summer day. I sing through the hours,
I cull pretty flowers and ride like a queen on
the sweet smelling hay. Happily, a new era has of
late open for our worried housekeepers, who spend their time

(25:40):
in the half frantic dusting of corners, spasmodic sweeping, impatient snatching,
or pushing aside obstacles in the room, hurrying and scurrying
upstairs and down cellar. It is not, says Prentice Molford,
the work that exhausts them. It is the mental condition
they are in that makes so many old and haggard.
At forty, all that is needful now to ease up

(26:01):
their burdens is to go to our Hawaiian paradise. A
newspaper correspondent, Annie Laurie has told us all about the
new kind of American girls just added to our country.
They are as straight as an arrow, and walk as
queens walk in fairy stories. They have great braids of
sleek black hair, soft brown eyes, and gleaming white teeth.

(26:23):
They can swim and ride and sing, and they are
brown with a skin that shines like bronze. There isn't
a worried woman in Hawaii. The women there can't worry.
They don't know how. They eat and sing and laugh
and see the sun and the moon set, and possess
their souls in smiling peace. If a Hawaii woman has

(26:44):
a good dinner, she laughs and invites her friends to
eat it with her. If she hasn't a good dinner,
she laughs and goes to sleep and forgets to be hungry.
She doesn't have to worry about what the people in
the downstairs flat will think if they don't see the
butcher's boy arrive on time. If she can earn the money,
she buys a nice, new glorified mother Hubbard. And if

(27:05):
she can't get it, she throws the old one into
the surf and washes it out, puts a new wreath
of fresh flowers in her hair, and starts out to
enjoy the morning in the breezes Thereof they are not
earnest workers. They haven't the slightest idea that they were
put upon earth to reform the universe. They're just happy.
They run across great stretches of clear white sand washed

(27:27):
with resplendent purple waves, And when the little brown babies
roll in the surf, their brown mothers run after them,
laughing and splashing like a lot of children. Or perhaps
we see them in gay cavalcades mounted upon garlanded ponies,
adorned by white jasmine wreaths with roses and pinks. And here,
in this paradise of laughter and light hearts and gentle music,

(27:49):
there's absolutely nothing to do but to care for the
children and old people, and to swim or ride. You
couldn't start a reform circle to save your life. There
isn't a jail in the place, nor a tenement quarter,
and there are no outdoor poor There isn't a woman's
club in Honolulu, not a club. There was a culture
circle once for a few days. A Boston woman who

(28:11):
went there for her health organized it, but it interfered
with afternoon nap time, so nobody came. When hereafter we
talk about worrying women, we must take into account our
Hawaiian sisters, if we will average up the amount of
worry per capita in our nation. A weather breeder, it
is probably quite within bounds to say that one out

(28:32):
of three of our American farming population, women and men,
never enjoy a beautiful day without first reminding you that
it is one of those infernal weather breeders. Habitual fretters
seem more trouble than others. They are never so well
as their neighbors. The weather never suits them. The climate
is trying. The winds are too high or too low.

(28:55):
It is too hot or too cold, too damp or
too dry. The roads are either muddy or dusty. I
met mister N one wet morning, says doctor John Todd,
and bound as I was to make the best of it,
I ventured, good morning, This rain will be fine for
your grass crop. Yes, perhaps, he replied, but it is

(29:18):
very bad for corn. I don't think we'll have half
a crop. A few days later I met him again.
This is a fine sun for corn, mister N, yes,
said he, but it's awful for Rye. Rye wants cold weather.
One cool morning soon after, I said, this is a
capital day for Rye. Yes, he said, but it is

(29:40):
the worst kind of weather for corn and grass. They
want heat to bring them forward. There are a vast
number of fidgety, nervous, and eccentric people who live only
to expect new disappointments or to recount their old ones.
Impatient people said, spurgeon water their miseries and hoe up
their comforts. Let's see, said a neighbor to a farmer

(30:02):
whose wagon was loaded down with potatoes. Weren't we talking
together last August? I believe so. At that time you
said corn was all burnt up, yes, and potatoes were
baking in the ground yes, And that your district could
not possibly expect more than half a crop. I remember, well,

(30:25):
here you are with your wagon loaded down. Things didn't
turn out so badly after all. Eh well, no oh,
said the farmer, as he raked his fingers through his hair.
But I tell you my geese suffered awfully for want
of a mud hole to paddle in. What is a
pessimist but a man who looks on the sun only
as a thing that casts a shadow. In Peeps's Diary

(30:48):
we learn the difference between eyes shut and ears open,
and ears shut and eyes open. In going from John
O Groat's house to Land's End, a blind man would
hear that the country was going to destruction, but a
deaf man with eyes open could see great prosperity. I
dare no more fret than curse or swear, said John Wesley.

(31:08):
A discontented mortal is no more a man than discord
is music. Why should a man whose blood is warm
within sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster sleep when
he wakes, and creep into the jaundice by being peevish?
Who are the lemon squeezers of society? They are people

(31:30):
who predict evil, extinguish hope, and see only the worst side.
People whose very look curdles the milk, and set your
teeth on edge. They are often worthy people who think
that pleasure is wrong. People set an old divine, who
lead us heavenward and stick pins into us all the way.
They say depressing things and do disheartening things. They chill

(31:51):
per meetings, discourage charitable institutions, injure commerce, and kill churches.
They are blowing out lights when they ought to be
kindling them. A man without mirth is like a wagon
without springs, in which one jolts over every pebble. With mirth,
he is like a chariot with springs, riding over the
roughest roads and scarcely feeling anything but a pleasant rocking motion.

(32:13):
Difficulties melt away before the man who carries about a
cheerful spirit and persistently refuses to be discouraged while they accumulate,
before the one who is always groaning over his hard
luck and scanning the horizon for clouds not yet in sight.
To one man, says Schopenhauer, the world is barren, dull
and superficial to another, rich, interesting, and full of meaning.

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If one loves beauty and looks for it, he will
see it wherever he goes. If there is music in
his soul, he will hear it everywhere. Every object in
nature will sing to him. Two men who live in
the same house and do the same work may not
live in the same world, although they are under the
same roof. One may see only deformity and ugliness. To him,

(32:57):
the world is out of joint, everything is cross grained,
out of sorts. The other is surrounded with beauty and harmony.
Everybody is kind to him, nobody wishes him harm. These
men see the same objects, but they do not look
through the same glasses. One looks through a smoked glass,
which drapes the whole world in mourning. The other looks
through rose colored lenses, which tint everything with loveliness and

(33:19):
touch it with beauty. Take two persons just home from
a vacation. One has positively seen nothing and has always
been robbed. The landlady was a harpy, the bedroom was unhealthy,
and the mutton was tough. The other has always found
the coziest nooks, the cheapest houses, the best landladies, the
finest views, and the best dinners. What is an optimist?

(33:44):
This is the question of farmer's boy, asked of his
father well, John replied his father. Ye know, I can't
give ye the dictionary mayonin of that word any more,
and I can of a great many others. But I've
got a kind of any day what it means. You
don't remember your uncle Henry, But I guess if there
ever was an optimist, he was one. Things was always

(34:06):
comin outright with Henry, and especially anything hard that he
had to do it wah an a goin to be hard.
Tea was jest kind of solid pleasant. Take hoen corn. Now,
if anything ever tuckered me out, twas hoen corn in
the hot sun, but in the field long about the
time I begun to lag back a little, Henry he'd

(34:28):
look up and say, good Jim, when we get these
two rose hoed and eighteen more, the piece'll be half done.
And he'd say it in such a kind of a
cheerful way that I couldn't bend any more tickled if
the piece had been all done, and the rest would
go light enough. But the worst thing we had to
do hoen corn was a picnic to it was pickin stones.

(34:52):
There was no end to that on our old farm.
If we wanted to raise anything. When we wind hurried
and pressed with something else. There was always pickin' stones
to do, and their wine a plowin', But what brought
up a fresh crop? And seems as if the pickin
had all to be done over again? Well, you'd a
thought to hear Henry that there wyan't any fun in

(35:13):
the world like pickin' stones. He looked at it in
a different way from anybody I ever see. Once, when
the corn was all hoed and the grass wine't fit
to cut yet, and I'd got all laid out to
go fishin', and father he up an set us to
pickin' stones up on the west piece, and I was
about ready to cry. Henry, he says, come on, Jim,

(35:36):
I know where there's lots of nuggets. And what do
you s'pose now? That boy had a kind of a
game that that their field was what he called a
placer mining field. And he got me into it, and
I could sworn I was in California all day. I
had such a good time. Only, says Henry, after we'd
got through the day's work. The way you get rich

(35:57):
with these nuggets is to get rid of em, instead
of to get m that somehow didn't strike my fancy,
but we'd had play instead of work anyway, and a
great lot of stones have been rooted out of that field.
And as I said before, I can't give ye any
dictionary definition of optimism. But if your uncle Henry Wyant
an optimist, I don't know what one is. At life's outset,

(36:21):
says one. A cheerful, optimistic temperament is worth everything. A
cheerful man who always feels first rate, who always looks
on the bright side, who is ever ready to snatch
victory from defeat, is the successful man. Everybody avoids the
company of those who are always grumbling, who are full
of ifs and butts. And I told you Sos, we

(36:44):
like the man who always looks toward the sun, whether
it shines or not. It is the cheerful, hopeful man
we go to for sympathy and assistance, not the carping,
gloomy critic who always thinks it is going to rain
and that we are going to have a terribly hot summer,
or a fearful thununderstorm, or who is forever complaining of
hard times and his hard lot. It is the bright, cheerful, hopeful,

(37:07):
contented man who makes his way, who is respected and admired.
Gloom and depression not only take much out of life,
but detract greatly from the chances of winning success. It
is the bright and cheerful spirit that wins the final triumph.
Living up Thanksgiving Avenue, I see our brother, who has
just sat down, lives on grumbling Street, said a keen

(37:30):
witted yerkshireman. I lived there myself for some time, and
never enjoyed good health. The air was bad, the house bad,
the water bad. The birds never came and sang in
the street, and I was gloomy and sad enough. But
I flitted. I got into Thanksgiving Avenue, and ever since
then I have had good health, and so have all

(37:51):
my family. The air is pure, the house good, the
sun shines on it all day, the birds are always singing,
and I am happy as I can live. Now. I
recommend our brother to flit. There are plenty of houses
to let on Thanksgiving Avenue, and he will find himself
a new man if he will only come, and I
shall be right glad to have him for a neighbor.

(38:13):
This world was not intended for a vale of tears,
but as a sweet veil of content. Travelers are told
by the Icelanders, who live amid the cold and desolation
of almost perpetual winter, that Iceland is the best land
the sun shines upon in the long Arctic night. The
Eskimaux is blithe and carolsome, far from the approach of

(38:34):
the white man, while amid the glorious scenery and even
like climate of Central America, the native languages have a
dozen words for pain and misery and sorrow for one
with any cheerful signification. When a Persian king was directed
by his wise men to wear the shirt of a
contented man, the only contented man in the kingdom had
no shirt. The most contented man in Boston does not

(38:56):
live on Commonwealth Avenue or do business on State Street.
He is bore and blind, and he pedals needles and
thread buttons and sewing room supplies about the streets of
Boston from house to house. Doctor minut Jay Savage used
to pity this man very much, and once in venturing
to talk with him about his condition, he was utterly
amazed to find that the man was perfectly happy. He

(39:19):
said that he had a faithful wife and a business
by which he earned sufficient for his wants, and if
he were to complain of his lot, he should feel
mean and contemptible. Surely, if there are any solid men
in Boston, he is one. Content is the magic lamp, which,
according to the beautiful picture painted for us by Gerda,
transforms the rude fisherman's hut into a palace of silver,

(39:42):
the logs, the floors, the roof, the furniture, everything being
changed and gleaming with new light. My crown is in
my heart, not on my head, not decked with diamonds
and Indian stones, nor to be seen. My crown is
called content a crown. It is that seldom kings enjoy
free oiling your business, machinery, business is king. We often

(40:06):
say that cotton is king, or corn is king. But
with greater propriety we may say that the king is
that great machine which is kept in motion by the
law of supply and demand. The destinies of all mankind
are ruled by it. Where the question asked says sterns,
what is at this moment the strongest power in operation
for controlling, regulating and inciting the actions of men? What

(40:28):
has most at its disposal the condition and destinies of
the world. We must answer at once. It is business
in its various ranks and departments, of which commerce, foreign
and domestic is the most appropriate representation. In all prosperous
and advancing communities advancing in arts, knowledge, literature, and social refinement.

(40:48):
Business is king. Other influences in society may be equally indispensable,
and some may think far more dignified. But business is king.
The statesman and the scholar, the no woman, and the
prince equally with the manufacturer, the mechanic, and the labor
pursue their several objects only by leave granted and means
furnished by this potentate oil is better than sand for

(41:12):
keeping this vast machinery in good running condition. Do not
shovel grit or gravel stones upon the bearings. A tiny
copper shaving in a wheelbox, or a scratch on a
journal may set a railway train on fire. The running
of the business world is damaged by whatever creates friction,
anxiety mars one's work. Nobody can do his best when

(41:35):
fevered by worry. One may rush and always be in
great haste, and may talk about being busy, fuming and sweating,
as if he were doing ten men's duties. And yet
some quiet person alongside who is moving leisurely and without
anxious haste, is probably accomplishing twice as much and doing
it better. Fluster unfits one for good work. Have you

(41:57):
not sometimes seen a business manager whose stiff would serve
as a good example to a poker. He acts toward
his employees as the father of Frederick the Great did
toward his subjects, caning them on the streets and shouting
I wish to be loved and not feared. Graul spitfire
and brothers, says Talmadge, wonder why they fail while Messr's

(42:18):
merriman and warm heart succeed. There is no investment of
business man can make that will pay him a greater
percent than patience and amiability. Good humor will sell the
most goods. John Wannamaker's clerks have been heard to say,
we can work better for a week after a pleasant
good morning from mister Wanamaker. This kindly disposition and cheerful manner,

(42:41):
and a desire to create a pleasant feeling and diffuse
good cheer among those who work for him, have had
a great deal to do with the great Merchant's remarkable success.
On the other hand, a man who easily finds fault
and is never generous spirited, who never commends the work
of subordinates when he can do so justly, who is
unwilling to brighten them, fails to secure the best of service.

(43:03):
Why not try Love's way. It will pay better and
be better. A habit of cheerfulness, enabling one to transmute
apparent misfortunes into real blessings, is a fortune to a
young man or young woman just crossing the threshold of
active life. There is nothing but ill fortune in a
habit of grumbling, which requires no talent, no self denial,

(43:25):
no brains, no character. Grumbling only makes an employee more
uncomfortable and may cause his dismissal. No one would or
should wish to make him do grudgingly what so many
others would be glad to do in a cheerful spirit.
If you dislike your position, complain to no one, least
of all to your employer. Fill the place as it

(43:46):
was never filled before, crowded to overflowing. Make yourself more
competent for it, show that you are abundantly worthy of
better things. Express yourself in this manner as freely as
you please, for it is the only way that will count.
No one ever found the world quite as he would
like it. You will be sure to have burdens laid

(44:08):
upon you that belong to other people, unless you are
a shirk yourself. But don't grumble. If the work needs
doing and you can do it, Never mind about the
other one who ought to have done it and didn't
do it yourself. Those workers who fill up the gaps
and smooth away the rough spots, and finish up the
jobs that others leave undone, they are the true peacemakers,

(44:29):
and worth a regiment of grumblers. Oh what a sunny,
winsome phase. She has set a Christian endeavor. In reporting
of a clerk whom he saw in a Bay City store,
the customers flocked about her like bees about a honey
bush in full bloom. Singing at your work. Give us, therefore,
let us cry with Carlyle, Oh, give us the man

(44:51):
who sings at his work. He will do more in
the same time. He will do it better, He will
persevere longer. One is scarcely sensible fatigue whilst he marches
to music. The very stars are said to make harmony
as they revolve in their spheres. Wondrous is the strength
of cheerfulness altogether past calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts

(45:14):
to be permanently useful must be uniformly joyous a spirit.
All sunshine, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright it
is a good sign, says another writer. When girlish voices
carol over the steaming dishpan or the mending basket, when
the broom moves rhythmically and the duster flourishes in time
to some brisk melody, we are sure that the dishes

(45:36):
shine more brightly, and that the sweeping and dusting and
mending are more satisfactory. Because of this running accompaniment of song.
Father smiles when he hears his girls singing about her work,
and mother's tired face brightens at the sound. Brothers and sisters,
without realizing it, perhaps catch the spirit of the cheerful worker.

(45:57):
There are singing milkers in Switzerland. A milk made or
man gets better wages if gifted with a good voice.
For a cow will yield one fifth more milk when
soothed by a pleasing melody. It was said by Bufon
that even sheep fattened better to the sound of music.
And when field hands are singing, as you sometimes hear
them in the old country, you may be sure the

(46:17):
labor is lightened. It is missus Howitt who has told
us of the musical bells of the farm teams in
a rural district in England. It was no regular tune,
but a delicious melody in that soft, sunshiny air, which
was filled at the same time with the song of birds.
Angela had heard all kinds of music in London, but
this was unlike anything she had heard before, so soft

(46:39):
and sweet and gladsome. On it came ringing, ringing, as
softly as flowing water. The boys and grandfather knew what
it meant. Then it came in sight, the farm team
going to the mill with sacks of corn to be ground,
each horse with a little string of bells to its harness.
On they came, the handsome, well care for creatures, nodding

(47:01):
their heads as they stepped along, and at every step
the cheerful and cheering melody rang out. Do all horses
down here have bells? Asked Angela. By no means, replied
her grandfather. They cost something. But if we can make
labor easier to a horse by giving him a little
music which he loves, he is less worn by his work,

(47:22):
and that is a saving worth thinking of. A horse
is a generous, noble, spirited animal, and not without intellect either,
and he is capable of much enjoyment. For music, a
spirit of song, if not the singing itself, is a
constant delight to us. It is like passing sweet meadows
alive with bobblinks. Some men, says Beecher, move through life

(47:45):
as a band of music moves down the street, flinging
out pleasures on every side, through the air, to every
one far and near who can listen. Others fill the
air with harsh clang and Clangor many men go through
life carrying their tongue, their temper, their whole disposition, so
that wherever they go others dread them. Some men fill
the air with their presence and sweetness, as orchards in

(48:08):
October days fill the air with the perfume of ripe fruit.
Good humor, health and good humor, said Masalon, are to
the human body like sunshine to vegetation. The late Charles A.
Dana fairly bubbled over with the enjoyment of his work,
and was up to his last illness at his office
every day a cabinet officer once said to him, well,

(48:31):
mister Dana, I don't see how you stand this infernal
grind grind, said mister Dana, you never were more mistaken.
I have nothing but fun. Bully was a favorite word
with him, a slang word used to express uncommon pleasure,
such as had been afforded by a trip abroad, or
by a run to Cuba or Mexico, or by the

(48:52):
perusal of something especially pleasing in the Sun's columns. One
of my neighbors is a very ill tempered man, said
Nathan Rothschild. He tries to vex me and has built
a great place for swine close to my walk. So
when I go out, I hear first grunt, grunt, then squeak, squeak.

(49:13):
But this does me no harm. I am always in
good humor. Offended by a pungent article, a gentleman called
at the tribune office and inquired for the editor. He
was shown into a little seven by nine sanctum, where
Greeley sat with his head close down to his paper,
scribbling away at a two forty rate. The angry man

(49:34):
began by asking if this was mister Greeley, Yes, sir,
what do you want, said the editor quickly, without once
looking up from his paper. The irate visitor then began
using his tongue with no reference to the rules of propriety,
good breeding, or reason. Meantime, mister Greeley continued to write.

(49:55):
Page after page was dashed off in the most impetuous style,
with no change of features, and without paying the slightest
attention to the visitor. Finally, after about twenty minutes of
the most impassioned scolding ever poured out in an editor's office,
the angry man became disgusted and abruptly turned to walk
out of the room. Then, for the first time, mister

(50:16):
Greeley quickly looked up, rose from his chair, and, slapping
the gentleman familiarly on his shoulder in a pleasant tone
of voice, said, don't go, friend, sit down, Sit down
and free your mind. It will do you good. You
will feel better for it. Besides, it helps me to
think what I am to write about. Don't go, one

(50:37):
good hearty laugh, says Talmich is like a bombshell exploding
in the right place, and spleen in discontent, like a
gun that kicks over the man shooting it off. Every
One says Lubbock likes a man who can enjoy a
laugh at his own expense, and justly so, for it
shows good humor and good sense. If you laugh at yourself,

(50:57):
other people will not laugh at you. People differ very
much in their sense of humor. As some are deaf
to certain sounds and blind to certain colors, So there
are those who seem deaf and blind to certain pleasures.
What makes me laugh until I almost go into convulsions
moves them not at all? Is it not worth while
to make an effort to see the funny side of

(51:18):
our petty annoyances? How could the two boys but laugh
after they had contended long over the possession of a
box found by the wayside, when they agreed to divide
its contents and found nothing in it. The ability to
get on with scolding irritating people is a great art
in doing business. To preserve serenity amid petty trials is

(51:38):
a happy gift. A sunny temper is also conducive to health.
A medical authority of highest repute affirms that excessive labor,
exposure to wet and cold, deprivation of sufficient quantities of
necessary and wholesome food, habitual bad lodging, sloth, and intemperance
are all deadly enemies to human life, but they are

(51:59):
none of them so bad as violent and ungoverned passions.
That men and women have frequently lived to an advanced
age in spite of these, but that instances are very
rare in which people of irascible tempers live to extreme
old age. Poltney Bigelow in Harper's Magazine, in relating the
story of Jameson's raid upon the bores of South Africa,

(52:19):
says that the triumphant boors fell on their knees, thanking
God for their victory, and that they prayed for their
enemies and treated their prisoners with the utmost kindness. Our
foreign missionary books relate similar anecdotes, it being a characteristic
feature of their childlike piety for new converts to take
literally the words of our Lord, love your enemies. It

(52:40):
is not true that the devil has his tale in everything.
A stalwart confidence in God and faith in the happy
outcome of life will do more to lubricate the creaking
machinery of our daily affairs than anything else. Loudiable e
s t mort courage Ami, loudiable est mort courage friend.

(53:00):
The devil is dead was Denis's constant countersign, which he
would give to everybody. They don't understand it, he would say,
but it wakes them up. I carry the good news
from city to city to uplift men's hearts. Once he
came across a child who had broken a pitcher courage
Amy lordiable s mort said he which was such cheering

(53:23):
news that she ceased crying and ran home to tell
it to her grandma. Give me the man who, like Emerson,
sees longevity in his cause, and who believes there is
a remedy for every wrong, a satisfaction for every longing soul.
The man who believes the best of everybody, and who
sees beauty and grace where others see ugliness and deformity.

(53:43):
Give me the man who believes in the ultimate triumph
of truth over error, of harmony, over discord of love,
over hate, of purity, over vice of light, over darkness
of life, over death. Such men are the true nation builders.
J Cook, many times a millionaire at the age of
fifty one, at fifty two, practically penniless, went to work

(54:04):
again and built another fortune. The last of his three
thousand creditors was paid, and the promise of the great
financier was fulfilled. To a visitor who once asked him
how he regained his fortune, mister Cook replied, that is
simple enough, by never changing the temperament I derived from
my father and mother, from my earliest experience in life,

(54:25):
I have always been of a hopeful temperament, never living
in a cloud. I have always had a reasonable philosophy
to think that men and times are better than harsh
criticism would suppose. I believe that this American world of
ours is full of wealth, and that it was only
necessary to go to work and find it. That is
the secret of my success in life. Always look on

(54:46):
the sunny side everything has gone. Sat a New York
business man in despair when he reached home. But when
he came to himself, he found that his wife and
his children, and the promises of God were left to
him suffering. It was said by Aristotle, becomes beautiful when
any one bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility,

(55:07):
but through greatness of mind. When Garrison was locked up
in the Boston City jail, he said he had two
delightful companions, a good conscience and a cheerful mind to
live as always seeing the invisible source of things is
the blessedest state of being, for the quietude it brings
away with those fellows who go howling through life, wrote Beck,

(55:29):
cheer and all the while passing for birds of paradise,
he that cannot laugh and be gay should look to himself.
He should fast and pray until his face breaks forth
into light. Martin Luther has told us that he was
once sorely discouraged and vexed at himself, the world, and
the church, and at the small success he then seemed
to be having. And he fell into a despondency which

(55:51):
affected all his household. His good wife could not charm
it away by cheerful speech or acts. At length, she
hit upon them happy device, which proved effectual. She appeared
before him in deep mourning. Who is dead? Asked Luther?
Oh do you not know, Martin, God in heaven is dead.

(56:13):
How can you talk such nonsense, Cathy? How can God die?
Why he is immortal and will live through all eternity?
Is that really true? Persisted she, as if she could
hardly credit his assertion that God still lived? How can
you doubt it? So surely? As there is a God
in heaven, asserted the aroused theologian, so sure is it

(56:36):
that he can never die? And yet, said she demurely,
in a tone which made him look up at her,
though you do not doubt there is a God, you
become hopeless and discouraged, as if there were none. It
seemed to me you acted as if God were dead.
The spell was broken. Luther heartily laughed at his wife's
lesson and her ingenious way of presenting it, I observed.

(56:59):
He remarked, what a wise woman my wife was, who
mastered my sadness. Jean Paul Richter's dream of no God
is one of the most somber things in all literature.
Tempestuous chaos, no healing hand, no infinite Father. I awoke
my soul wept for joy that it could again worship
the infinite Father. And when I arose from all nature,

(57:23):
I heard flowing, sweet, peaceful tones, as from evening bells.
For taking your fun every day as you do your work.
Ten things are necessary for happiness in this life, the
first being a good digestion, and the other nine money.
So at least it is said by our modern philosophers.
Yet the author of a gentle life speaks more truly

(57:44):
in saying that the divine creation includes thousands of superfluous
joys which are totally unnecessary to the bare support of life.
He alone is the happy man who has learned to
extract happiness not from ideal conditions, but from the actual
ones about him. The man who has mastered the secret
will not wait for ideal surroundings. He will not wait

(58:05):
until next year, next decade, until he gets rich, until
he can travel abroad, until he can afford to surround
himself with works of the great masters. But he will
make the most out of life to day where he is.
Why thus longing, thus forever sighing for the far off,
unattained and dim, while the beautiful all roundy lying offers

(58:25):
up its low perpetual him happy the man, and happy
he alone, he who can call to day his own,
He who secure within himself, can say, tomorrow, do thy worst,
for I have lived to day. Paradise is here or nowhere.
You must take your joy with you or you will
never find it. It is after business hours, not in them,

(58:47):
that men break down. Men must, like Philip Armer, turn
the key on business when they leave it, and at
once unlock the doors of some wholesome recreation. Doctor Lyman
Beecher used to divert himself with a yilen. He had
a regular system of what he called unwinding, thus relieving
the great strain put upon him. A man, says doctor Johnson,

(59:09):
should spend part of his time with the laughers. Humor
was Lincoln's life preserver, as it has been of thousands
of others. If it were not for this, he used
to say, I should die. His jests and quaint stories
lighted the gloom of dark hours of national peril. Next
to virtue, said Agnes Strickland. The fun in this world

(59:30):
is what we can least spare when the harness is off,
said Judge Haliburton. A critter likes to kick up his heels.
I have fun from morning till night, said the editor
charlesy Dana to a friend who was growing prematurely old.
Do you read novels and play billiards and walk a
great deal? Gladstone early formed a habit of looking on

(59:51):
the bright side of things, and never lost a moment's
sleep by worrying about public business. There are many out
of door sports, and the very presence of nature is
to many a great joy. How true it is that
if we are cheerful and contented, all nature smiles with us.
The air seems more balmy, the sky more clear, the
earth has a brighter green, the trees have a richer foliage,

(01:00:14):
the flowers are more fragrant, the birds sing more sweetly,
and the sun, moon, and stars all appear more beautiful.
It is a grand thing to live, To open the
eyes in the morning and look out upon the world,
To drink in the pure air and enjoy the sweet sunshine,
to feel the pulse bound and the being thrill with
the consciousness of strength and power in every nerve. It

(01:00:35):
is a good thing simply to be alive. And it
is a good world we live in, in spite of
the abuse we are fond of giving it. I love
to hear the beast sing amid the blossom sunny. To me,
his drowsy melody is sweeter than his honey, For while
the shades are shifting along the path to noon, my
happy brain goes drifting to dreamland on his tune. I

(01:00:56):
love to hear the wind blow amid the blushing petals,
and when a fragile flower falls, to watch it as
it settles, and view each leaflet falling upon the emerald
turf with idle mind, recalling the bubbles on the surf.
I love to lie upon the grass and let my
glances wander birthward and skyward. There while peacefully I ponder
how much of purest pleasure birth holds for his delight.

(01:01:19):
Who takes life's cup to measure naught but its blessings
bright upon every side of us, are to be found
what one has happily called unworked joy minds. And he
who goes prospecting to see what he can daily discover,
is a wise man, training his eye to see beauty
in everything and everywhere. One ought every day, says Gerda,

(01:01:41):
at least to hear a little song, read a good poem,
see a fine picture, And if it were possible to
speak a few reasonable words, And if this be good
for one's self, why not try the song, the poem,
the picture, and the good words on some one else.
Shall music and poetry eye out of you while you
are struggling for that which can never enrich the character

(01:02:03):
nor add to the soul's worth. Shall a disciplined imagination
fill the mind with beautiful pictures? He who has intellectual
resources to fall back upon, will not lack for daily
recreation most wholesome. It was a remark of Archbishop Weightly
that we ought not only to cultivate the cornfields of
the mind, but the pleasure grounds also. A well balanced

(01:02:25):
life is a cheerful life, a happy union of fine
qualities and unruffled temper, a clear judgment, and well proportioned faculties.
In a corner of his desk, Lincoln kept a copy
of the latest humorous work, and it was frequently his habit,
when fatigued, annoyed, or depressed, to take this up and
read a chapter with great relief, clean, sensible wit, or

(01:02:47):
sheer nonsense, anything to provoke mirth and make a man jollier. This, too,
is a gift from Heaven. In the world of books,
what is grand and inspiring may easily become a part
of every man's life. Life, a fondness for good literature,
for good fiction, for travel, for history, and for biography.
What is better than this The Queen of the World.

(01:03:11):
This title best fits Victoria, the true Queen of the world.
But it fits her best because she is the best
type of a noble wife, the queen of her husband's heart,
and of a queen mother whose children rise up and
call her blest. I noticed, said Franklin, a mechanic among
a number of others at work on a house a
little way from my office, who always appeared to be

(01:03:32):
in a merry humor. He had a kind word and
smile for every one he met. Let the day be
ever so cold, gloomy, or sunless, a happy smile danced
on his cheerful countenance. Meeting him one morning, I asked
him to tell me the secret of his constant flow
of spirits. It is no secret, doctor, he replied. I

(01:03:53):
have one of the best of wives. And when I
go to work, she always has a kind word of
encouragement for me, and and when I go home she
meets me with a smile and a kiss, and then
tea is sure to be ready. And she has done
so many little things through the day to please me
that I cannot find it in my heart to speak
an unkind word to anybody. Some of the happiest homes

(01:04:14):
I have ever been in, ideal homes where intelligence, peace
and harmony dwell, have been homes of poor people. No
rich carpets covered the floors, there were no costly paintings
on the walls, no piano, no library, no works of art.
But there were contented minds, devoted and unselfish lives, each

(01:04:34):
contributing as much as possible to the happiness of all,
and endeavoring to compensate by intelligence and kindness for the
poverty of their surroundings. One cheerful, bright and contented spirit
in a household will uplift the tone of all the rest.
The keynote of the home is in the hand of
the resolutely cheerful member of the family, and he or
she will set the pitch for the rest. Young men,

(01:04:57):
it is said, are apt to be overbearing in pure
brusque in their manner. They need that suavity of manner
and urbanity of demeanor, gracefulness of expression, and delicacy of manner,
which can only be gained by association with the female character,
which possesses the delicate instinct, ready judgment, acute perceptions, wonderful intuition.

(01:05:17):
The blending of the male and female characteristics produces the
grandest character in each the woman who has what Helen
Hunt so aptly called a genius for affection. She indeed
is queen of the home. I have often had occasion,
said Washington, irving to remark the fortitude with which woman
sustains the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disasters which

(01:05:41):
break down the spirit of a man and prostrate him
in the dust, seem to call forth all the energies
of the softer sex, and give such intrepidity and elevation
to their character that at times it approaches sublimity. If
a wife cannot make her home bright and happy, so
that it shall be the cleanest, sweetest, cheerfulest place her
husband can find refuge in or retreat from the toils

(01:06:02):
and troubles of the outer world, then God helped the
poor man, for he is virtually homeless. Home keeping hearts,
said Longfellow, are happiest. What is a good wife, but
good mother? Is she not a gift out of Heaven?
Sacred and delicate, with affections so great that no measuring
line short of that of the infinite God can tell

(01:06:22):
their bound fashion to refine and soothe, and lift and
irradiate home and society, and the world of such value
that no one can appreciate it unless his mother lived
long enough to let him understand it, or unless in
some great crisis of life. When all else failed him,
he had a wife to reinforce him with a faith
in God that nothing could disturb. Nothing can be more

(01:06:44):
delightful than an anecdote of Joseph H. Choate of New York,
our minister at the Court of Saint James. Upon being
asked at a dinner party whom he would prefer to
be if he could not be himself, he hesitated a moment,
apparently running over in his mind the great ones on Earth,
when his eyes rested on missus Choate at the other
end of the table, who was watching him with great

(01:07:05):
interest in her face, and suddenly replied, if I could
not be myself, I should like to be missus Choate's
second husband. Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to
the soul, and health to the bones. It is the
little disputes, little fault findings, little insinuations, little reflections, sharp criticisms,
fretfulness and impatience, little unkindnesses, slurs, little discourtesies, bad temper

(01:07:30):
that create most of the discord and unhappiness in the family.
How much it would add to the glory of the
homes of the world if that might be said of
every one, which Roger said of Lord Holland's sunshiny face,
he always comes to breakfast like a man upon whom
some sudden good fortune has fallen. The value of pleasant
words every day as you go along is well depicted

(01:07:51):
by Aunt Jerusha in what she said to our genial
friend of Zion's Herald. If folks could have their funerals
when they are alive and well and struggling along, what
a help it would be, she sighed, upon returning from
a funeral, wondering how poor missus Brown would have felt
if she could have heard what the minister said. Poor soul,
she never dreamed they sat so much by her. Miss

(01:08:14):
Brown got discouraged. Ye, see, Deacon Brown, he got a
way of blaming everything on to her. I don't suppose
the Deacon meant it twas just his way, but it's
awful wearing. When things wore out or broke, he acted
just as if Miss Browne did it herself on purpose,
and they all caught it like the measles or the
whooping cough. And the minister ate telling how the deacon

(01:08:38):
brought his young wife here when tea want nothing but
a wilderness, and how patiently she bore hardship, and what
a good wife she'd been. Now the minister wouldn't have
known anything about that if the deacon hadn't told him, Dear, dear,
If he'd only told Miss Brown herself what he thought,
I do believe he might have saved the funeral. And

(01:08:59):
when when the minister said how the children would miss
their mother, seemed as though they couldn't stand it, poor things. Well,
I guess it is true enough Miss Brown was always
doing for some of them. When they were singing about
sweet rest in heaven, I couldn't help thinking that that
was something Miss Brown would have to get used to,
for she never had none of it here. She'd have

(01:09:20):
been awful pleased with the flowers. They was pretty, and
no mistake, ye see the Deacon Wyant never willing for
her to have a flower bed. He said tea was
enough prettier sight to see good cabbages a growing. But
Miss Brown always kind of hankered after sweet smelling things
like roses and such. What did you say, LEVI most

(01:09:43):
time for supper, well landsake, So it is I must
have got to meditating. I've been a thinking, LEVI you
needn't tell the minister anything about me. If the pancakes
and pumpkin pies are good, you just say so as
we go along. It ain't best to keep everything laid
up for funerals. It is the grand secret of a

(01:10:06):
happy home to express the affection you really have. He
is the happiest, it was said by Gerda. Be he
king or peasant who finds peace in his home. There
are indeed many serious, two serious minded fathers and mothers
who do not wish to advertise their children to all
the neighbors as the laughing family. If this be so,

(01:10:26):
yet at the very least these solemn parents may read
the Bible where it is said, provoke not your children
to wrath. It means literally, do not irritate your children,
do not rub them up the wrong way. Children ought
never to get the impression that they live in a hopeless, cheerless,
cold world. But the household cheerfulness should transform their lives

(01:10:47):
like sunlight, making their hearts glad with little things, rejoicing
upon small occasion. How beautiful would our home life be
if every little child at the bedtime hour could look
into the faces of the older ones and say, we've
had such sweet times today, to love and to be loved,
says Sidney Smith, is the greatest happiness of existence. Five.

(01:11:10):
Finding what you do not seek. Dining one day with
Baron James Rothschild, Eugene Delacroix, the famous French artist, confessed
that during some time past he had vainly sought for
a head to serve as a model for that of
a beggar in a picture which he was painting, and
that as he gazed at his host's features, the idea
suddenly occurred to him that the very head he desired

(01:11:31):
was before him. Rothchild, being a great lover of art,
readily consented to sit as the beggar. The next day
at the studio, Delacroix placed a tunic around the baron's shoulders,
put a stout staff in his hand, and made him
pose as if he were resting on the steps of
an ancient Roman temple. In this attitude, he was found

(01:11:51):
by one of the artist's favorite pupils. In a brief
absence of the master from the room. The youth naturally
concluded that the beggar had just been brought in, and,
with a sympathetic look, quietly slipped a piece of money
into his hand. Rothchild thanked him, simply pocketed the money,
and the student passed out. Rothschild then inquired of the

(01:12:11):
master and found that the young man had talent but
very slender means. Soon after, the youth received a letter
stating that charity bears interest, and that the accumulated interest
on the amount he had given to one he supposed
to be a beggar was represented by the sum of
ten thousand francs, which was awaiting his claim at the
Rothschild office. This illustrates while the art of cheerful amusement,

(01:12:33):
even if one has great business, cares the entertainment of
the artist, the personation of a beggar, and an act
of beneficence toward a worthy student. It illustrates too, what
was said by Wilhelm Vaughan Humboldt that it is worthy
of special remark that when we are not too anxious
about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict
and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself.

(01:12:58):
We carry each day nobly doing the duty or enjoying
the privilege of the moment, without thinking whether or not
it will make us happy. This is quite in accord
with the saying of George Herbert, the consciousness of duty
performed gives us music at midnight. Are not buoyant spirits
like water sparkling when it runs. I have found my
greatest happiness in labour, said Gladstone. I early form the

(01:13:22):
habit of industry, and it has been its own reward.
The young are apt to think that rest means a
cessation from all effort. But I have found the most
perfect rest in changing effort. If brain weary over books
and study, go out into the blessed sunlight and the
pure air, and give heartfelt exercise to the body, the
brain will soon become calm and rested. The efforts of

(01:13:45):
nature are ceaseless. Even in our sleep, the heart throbs on.
I try to live close to nature and to imitate
her in my labors. The compensation is sound sleep, a
wholesome digestion, and powers that are kept at their best.
And this I take it is the chief reward of industry,
Owing to ingrained habits, said Horace. Man. Work has always

(01:14:08):
been to me what water is to a fish. I
have wondered a thousand times to hear people say I
don't like this business, or I wish I could exchange
it for that for with me, when I have had
anything to do, I do not remember ever to have demurred,
but have always said about it like a fatalist, And
it was as sure to be done as the sun
was to set. One's personal enjoyment is a very small thing,

(01:14:30):
but one's personal usefulness is a very important thing. Those
only are happy who have their minds fixed on some
object other than their own happiness. The most delicate, the
most sensible, of all pleasures, says la Bruyere, consists in
promoting the pleasures of others, and Hawthorne has said that
the inward pleasure of imparting pleasure is the choicest of all. Oh,

(01:14:53):
it is great, said Carlyle. And there is no other greatness.
To make some nook of God's creation more fruitful, better,
more worthy of God, To make some human heart a
little wiser, manlier, happier, more blessed, less accursive, the gladness
of service, of having some honorable share in the world's work.
What is better than this? The Lord must love the

(01:15:15):
common people, said Lincoln, for he made so many of them,
and so few of the other kind, to extend to
all the cup of joy is indeed angelic business, and
there is nothing that makes one more beautiful than to
be engaged in it. The high desire that others may
be blest savors of heaven. The memory of those who
spend their days in hanging sweet pictures of faith and

(01:15:36):
trust in the galleries of sunless lives shall never perish
from the earth. Doing good by stealth and having it
found out by accident, This said Charles Lamb is the
greatest pleasure I know. Money never yet made a man happy,
said Franklin, And there is nothing in its nature to
produce happiness. To do good with it makes life a

(01:15:58):
delight to the giver. How happy, then, was the life
of Jean Ingelow, since what she received from the sale
of a hundred thousand copies of her poems and fifty
thousand of her prose works, she spent largely in charity,
one unique charity being a copyright dinner three times a
week to twelve poor persons just discharged from the neighboring hospitals.

(01:16:19):
Nor was any one made happier by it than the
poet John Buskin, inherited a million dollars with this money.
He said about doing good, says a writer in the Thorina,
poor young men and women who were struggling to get
an education were helped, Homes for working men and women
were established, and model apartment houses were erected. He also

(01:16:40):
promoted a work for reclaiming waste land outside of London.
This land was used for the aid of unfortunate men
who wished to rise again from the state in which
they had fallen through cruel social conditions and their own weaknesses.
It is said that this work suggested to General Booth
his colonization farms. Ruskin has also, so ever been liberal

(01:17:00):
in aiding poor artists, and has done much to encourage
artistic taste among the young. On one occasion he purchased
ten fine water color paintings by Holman Hunt for three thousand,
seven hundred and fifty dollars to be hung in the
public schools of London. By eighteen seventy seven, he had
disposed of three fourths of his inheritance, besides all the

(01:17:21):
income from his books. But the calls of the poor,
and his plans looking toward educating and ennobling the lives
of working men, giving more sunshine and joy were such
that he determined to dispose of all the remainder of
his wealth, except to some sufficient to yield him one thousand,
five hundred dollars a year on which to live our own.
Peter Cooper, in his last days, was one of the

(01:17:43):
happiest men in America, his beneficence shown in his countenance.
Let the man who has the blues take a map
and CeNSE his table of the world, and estimate how
many millions there are who would gladly exchange lots with him.
And let him begin upon some practicable plan to do
all the good he can to as many as he
and he will forget to be despondent. And he need
not stop short at praying for them, without first giving

(01:18:05):
every dollar he can, without troubling the Lord about that.
Let him scatter his flowers as he goes along, since
he will never go over the same road again. No
man in England had a better time than did do
moryon that cold day when he took the hat of
an old soldier on Hampstead Road and sent him away
to the soup kitchen in Euston to get warm. The

(01:18:26):
artist chalked on a blackboard such portraits as he commonly made,
four punch and soon gathered a great quantity of small
coins for the grateful soldier, who, however, at once rubbed
out do Moya's pictures and put on the Faithful Dog
and a battle scene as more artistic Chinese. Gordon, after
serving faithfully and valiantly in the Great Chinese Rebellion and

(01:18:47):
receiving the highest honors of the Chinese Empire, returned to England,
caring little for the praise thus heaped on him. He
took some position at Gravesend, just below London, where he
filled his house with boys from the street, whom he
taught and made men of, and then secured them places
on ships, following them all over the world with letters
of advice and encouragement, his head in a hole. I

(01:19:11):
was appointed to lecture in a town in Great Britain,
six miles from the railway, said John be Goff, and
a man drove me in a fly from the station
to the town. I noticed that he sat leaning forward
in an awkward manner, with his face close to the
glass of the window. Soon he folded a handkerchief and
tied it round his neck. I asked him if he

(01:19:31):
was cold, No, sir, Then he placed the handkerchief round
his face. I asked him if he had the toothache. No, sir,
was the reply. Still he sat leaning forward. At last,
I said, will you please tell me why you sit
leaning forward that way with a handkerchief round your neck

(01:19:51):
if you are not cold and have no toothache? He said,
very quietly. The window of the carriage is broke and
the wind is cold, and I am trying to keep
it from you. I said, in surprise. You are not
putting your face to that broken pain to keep the
wind from me, are you, yes, sir? I am Why
do you do that? God bless you, sir. I owe

(01:20:15):
everything I have in the world to you. But I
never saw you before, No, sir, but I have seen you.
I was a ballad singer once. I used to go
round with a half starved baby in my arms for charity,
and a draggled wife at my heels half the time
with her eyes blackened. And I went to hear you
in Edinburgh, and you told me I was a man.

(01:20:37):
And when I went out of that house, I said,
by the help of God, I'll be a man. And
now I've a happy wife and a comfortable home. God
bless you. Sir, I would stick my head in any
hole under the heavens if it would do you any good.
Let's find the sunny side of men, or be believers
in it. A light there is in every soul that
takes the pains to win it. Oh, there's a slumbering

(01:21:01):
good in all, and we perchance may wake it. Our
hands contain the magic wand this life is what we
make it. He indeed, is getting the most out of life.
Who does most to elevate mankind? How happy were those
little sisters of the poor attours who took scissors to
divide their last remnant of bed clothing with an old
woman who came to them at night craving hospitality. And

(01:21:24):
how happy was that American school teacher who gave up
the best room in the house, which she had engaged
long before the season opened at a mountain sanitarium during
the late War, taking instead of it the poorest room
in the house, that she might give good quarters to
a soldier just out of his camp. Hospital. Teach self denial,
said Walter Scott, and make its practice pleasurable, and you

(01:21:45):
create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever
issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer. Yet, how
many there are ready to make some great sacrifice? Who
neglect those little acts of kindness which make so many
lives brighter and happier. I say, Jim, it's the first
time I ever had anybody ask my parting, and a
kind oh took me off my feet. A young lady

(01:22:08):
had knocked him down. In hastily turning a corner. She
stopped and said to the ragged crossing boy, I beg
your pardon, my little fellow, I am very sorry I
ran against you. He took off the piece of a
cap he had on his skull, made a low bow,
and said, with a broad smile, you have my parting,
miss and welcome. And the next time you run agin me,

(01:22:29):
you can knock me clean down, and I won't say
a word. One of the greatest mistakes of life is
to save our smiles and pleasant words and sympathy for
those of our set, or for those not now with us,
and for other times than the present. If a word
or two will render a man happy, said a Frenchman,
he must be a wretch. Indeed, who will not give it.

(01:22:50):
It is like lighting another man's candle with your own,
which loses none of its brilliancy by what the other gains.
Sidney Smith recommends us to make at least one person
happy every day. Take ten years, and you will make
thirty six hundred and fifty persons happy, or brighten a
small town by your contribution to the fund of general joy.
One who is cheerful is pre eminently useful. Doctor Raffles

(01:23:14):
once said, I have made it a rule never to
be with a person ten minutes without trying to make
him happier. It was a remark of doctor Dwight that
one who makes a little child happier for half an
hour is a fellow worker with God. A little boy
said to his mother, I couldn't make little sister happy,
know how I could fix it, But I made myself

(01:23:34):
happy trying to make her happy. I make Jim happy,
and he laughs, said another boy, speaking of his invalid brother.
And that makes me happy, and I laugh. There was
once a king who loved his little boy very much,
and took a great deal of pains to please him.
So he gave him a pony to ride, beautiful rooms,

(01:23:54):
to live in, pictures, books, toys without number, teachers, companions,
and everything that money could buy, or ingenuity devise. But
for all this the young prince was unhappy. He wore
a frown wherever he went, and was always wishing for
something he did not have. At length, the magician came
to the court. He saw the scowl on the boy's

(01:24:15):
face and said to the King, I can make your
son happy and turn his frowns into smiles. But you
must pay me a great price for telling him this secret.
All right, said the king. Whatever you ask I will give.
The magician took the boy into a private room. He
wrote something with a white substance on a piece of paper.

(01:24:36):
He gave the boy a candle and told him to
light it and hold it under the paper, and then
see what he could read. Then the magician went away.
The boy did as he had been told, and the
white letters turned into a beautiful blue. They formed these words,
do a kindness to some one every day. The prince
followed the advice and became the happiest boy in the realm.

(01:24:59):
Happy winess, says one writer, is a mosaic composed of
many smaller stones. It is the little acts of kindness,
the little courtesies, the disposition to be accommodating, to be helpful,
to be sympathetic, to be unselfish, to be careful, not
to wound the feelings, not to expose the sore spots,
to be charitable of the weaknesses of others, to be considerate.

(01:25:21):
These are the little things which, added up at night,
are found to be the secret of a happy day.
How much greater are all these than one great act
of noteworthy goodness once a year. Our lives are made
up of trifles. Emergencies rarely occur, Little things, unimportant events,
experiences so small as to scarcely leave a trace behind

(01:25:43):
make up the sum total of life. And the one
great thing in life is to do a little good
to every one we meet. Ready, sympathy, a quick eye,
and a little tact are all that are needed. This
point is happily illustrated by this report of an incident
upon a train from Providence to Boston. A lady was
caring for her father, whose mental faculties were weakened by age.

(01:26:06):
He imagined that some imperative duty called on him to
leave the swift moving train, and his daughter could not
quiet him. Just then she noticed a large man watching
them over the top of his paper. As soon as
he caught her eye, he rose and crossed quickly to her.
I beg your pardon. You are in trouble. May I
help you? She explained the situation to him. What is

(01:26:30):
your father's name, he asked, She told him, and then,
with an encouraging smile, she spoke to her venerable father,
who was sitting immediately in front of her. The next moment,
the large man turned over the seat, and, leaning toward
the troubled old man, he addressed him by name, shook
hands with him cordially, and engaged him in a conversation

(01:26:50):
so interesting and so cleverly arranged to keep his mind
occupied that the old gentleman forgot his need to leave
the train and did not think of it again until
they were in Boston. There, the stranger put the lady
and her charge into a carriage, received her assurance that
she felt perfectly safe, and was about to close the
carriage door when she remembered that she had felt so
safe in the keeping of this noble looking man that

(01:27:12):
she had not even asked his name. Hastily putting her
hand against the door, she said, pardon me, but you
have rendered me such service. May I not know whom
I am thanking? The big man smiled as he turned
away and answered Philip's Brooks. What a gift it is,
said Beecher, who was the great preacher of cheerfulness, to

(01:27:33):
make all men better and happier without knowing it. We
do not suppose that flowers know how sweet they are.
These roses and carnations have made me happy for a day.
Yet they stand huddled together in my pitcher without seeming
to know my thoughts of them, or the gracious work
they are doing. And how much more is it to
have a disposition that carries with it involuntarily sweetness, calmness, courage,

(01:27:58):
hope and happiness. Yet this is the portion of good
nature in a large minded, strong natured man. When it
has made him happy, it has scarcely begun its office.
God sends a natural heart singer, a man whose nature
is large and luminous, and who, by his very carriage
and spontaneous actions, calms, cheers and helps his fellows. God

(01:28:22):
bless him, for he blesses everybody. This is just what
mister Beecher would have said about Phillips Brooks. And what
better can be said than to compare the heart's good
cheer to a floral offering are not flowers, appropriate gifts
to persons of all ages, in any conceivable circumstances in
which they are placed. So the heart's good, cheer and

(01:28:43):
deeds of kindness are always acceptable to children and youth,
to busy men and women, to the aged, and to
a world of invalids. Thus live and die, O man immortal,
says doctor Chalmers. Live for something, Do good, and leave
behind you a monument of virtue which the storms of
time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love,

(01:29:06):
and mercy on the hearts of those who come in
contact with you, and you will never be forgotten. Good
deeds will shine as brightly on earth as the stars
of heaven. What is needed to round out human happiness
is a well balanced life. Not ease, not pleasure, not happiness.
But a man nature is after there is, says Robert Waters.

(01:29:29):
No success without honor, no happiness without a clear conscience,
no use in living at all, if only for oneself.
It is not at all necessary for you to make
a fortune, but it is necessary, absolutely necessary, that you
should become a fair, dealing, honorable, useful man, radiating goodness
and cheerfulness wherever you go, and making your life a blessing.

(01:29:51):
When a man does not find repose in himself, says
a French proverb, it is vain for him to seek
it elsewhere. Happy is he who has no sense of
discord with the harmony of the universe, who is open
to the voices of nature and of the spiritual realm,
and who sees the light that never was on sea
or land. Such a life can but give expression to
its inward harmony. Every pure and healthy thought, every noble

(01:30:15):
aspiration for the good and the true, every longing of
the heart for a higher and better life, every lofty
purpose and unselfish endeavor, makes the human spirit stronger, more harmonious,
and more beautiful. It is this alone that gives a
self centered confidence in one's heavenated powers, and a high
minded cheerfulness like that of a celestial spirit. It is

(01:30:37):
this which an old writer has called the paradise of
a good conscience. I count this thing to be grandly true,
that a noble deed is a step toward God, lifting
the soul from the common clod to a purer air
and a broader view. We rise by the things that
are under our feet, by what we have mastered of
good or gain by the pride deposed and a passion slain,

(01:30:58):
and the vanquished ills that we out meet. My body
must walk the earth, said an ancient poet. But I
can put wings on my soul and plumes to my
hardest thought. The splendors and symphonies and the ecstasies of
a higher world are with us now in the rudimentary
organs of eye and ear and heart. Much we have
to do much, We have to love much, we have

(01:31:19):
to hope for. And our joy is the grace we
say to God when I think upon God, said Heiden
to Carpani. My heart is so full of joy that
the notes leap from my pen, says Gibbons. Our lives
are songs. God writes the words, and we set them
to music at leisure. And the song is sad or

(01:31:39):
the song is glad. As we choose to fashion the measure.
We must write the song, whatever the words, whatever its
rhyme or meter. And if it is sad, we must
make it glad, and if sweet, we must make it sweeter.
Six looking pleasant something to be worked from the inside.
Acting on a sudden impulse, an elderly woman, the widow

(01:32:01):
of a soldier who had been killed in the Civil War,
went into a photographers to have her picture taken. She
was seated before the camera wearing the same stern, hard
forbidding look that had made her an object of fear
to the children living in the neighborhood. When the photographer,
thrusting his head out from the black cloth, said, suddenly,
brighten the eyes a little. She tried, but the dull

(01:32:23):
and heavy look still lingered. Look a little pleasanter, said
the photographer in an unimpassioned but confident and commanding voice.
See here, the woman retorted sharply. If you think that
an old woman who is dull can look bright, that
one who feels cross can become pleasant every time she
is told to, you don't know anything about human nature.

(01:32:44):
It takes something from the outside to brighten the eye
and illuminate the face. Oh no, it doesn't. It's something
to be worked from the inside. Try it again, said
the photographer, good naturedly. Something in his manner inspired fate,
and she tried again, this time with better success. That's good,

(01:33:05):
that's fine. You look twenty years younger, exclaimed the artist
as he caught the transient glow that illuminated the faded face.
She went home with a queer feeling in her heart.
It was the first compliment she had received since her
husband had passed away and had left a pleasant memory behind.
When she reached her little cottage, she looked long in

(01:33:27):
the glass and said, there may be something in it,
but I'll wait and see the picture. When the picture came,
it was like a resurrection. The face seemed alive with
the lost fires of youth. She gazed long and earnestly,
then said, in a clear, firm voice, if I could
do it once, I can do it again. Approaching the

(01:33:48):
little mirror above her bureau, she said, brighten up, Catherine,
and the old light flashed up once more. Look a
little pleasanter, she commanded, and a calm and radiant smile
diffused itself over the face. Her neighbors, as the writer
of this story has said, soon remarked the change that
had come over her face. Why missus a, you are

(01:34:10):
getting young. How do you manage it? It is almost
all done from the inside. You just brighten up inside
and feel pleasant. Fate served me meanly, But I looked
at her and laughed that none might know how bitter
was the cup I quaffed along, came joy and paused
beside me where I sat, saying I came to see

(01:34:31):
what you were laughing at. Every emotion tends to sculpture
the body into beauty or into ugliness. Worrying, fretting, unbridled passions, petulance, discontent,
Every dishonest act, every falsehood, every feeling of envy, jealousy, fear,
each has its effect on the system and acts deleteriously,

(01:34:51):
like a poison or a deformer of the body. Professor
James of Harvard, an expert in the mental sciences, says,
every small stroke of virtue or vice leaves its ever
so little scar. Nothing we ever do is, in strict
literalness wiped out. The way to be beautiful without is
to be beautiful within. Worth five hundred dollars. It is

(01:35:14):
related that Dwight Elk Moody once offered to his Northfield
pupils a prize of five hundred dollars for the best thought.
This took the prize. Men grumble because God put thorns
with roses. Wouldn't it be better to thank God that
He put roses with thorns. We win half the battle
when we make up our minds to take the world
as we find it, including the thorns. It is, says Fontanell,

(01:35:37):
a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much. This
is what happens in real life. Watch Edison. He makes
the most expensive experiments throughout a long period of time,
and he expects to make them, and he never worries
because he does not succeed the first time. I cannot
but think, says Sir John Lubbock, that the world would

(01:35:58):
be better and brighter if our teachers were dwell on
the duty of happiness as well as on the happiness
of duty. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in advanced years, acknowledged his
debt of gratitude to the nurse of his childhood, who
studiously taught him to ignore unpleasant incidents. If he stubbed
his toe, or skinned his knee, or bumped his nose,
his nurse would never permit his mind to dwell upon

(01:36:20):
the temporary pain, but claimed his attention for some pretty object,
or charming story, or happy reminiscence. To her. He said
he was largely indebted for the sunshine of a long life.
It is a lesson which is easily mastered in childhood,
but seldom to be learned in middle life, and never
in old age. When I was a boy, says another author,

(01:36:42):
I was consoled for cutting my finger by having my
attention called to the fact that I had not broken
my arm. And when I got a cinder in my eye,
I was expected to feel more comfortable because my cousin
had lost his eye by an accident. We should brave trouble,
says Beecher. As the New England boy braves winter. The
school is a mile away over the hill. Yet he

(01:37:02):
lingers not by the fire, but with his books slung
over his shoulder, he sets out to face the storm.
When he reaches the topmost ridge, where the snow lies
and drifts, and the north wind comes keen and biting,
does he shrink and cower down by the fences, or
run into the nearest house to warm himself. No, he
buttons up his coat and rejoices to defy the blast,

(01:37:25):
and tosses the snow reads with his foot, and so
erect and fearless, with strong heart and ruddy cheek, he
goes on to his place at school. Children should be
taught the habit of finding pleasure everywhere, and to see
the bright side of everything. Serenity of mind comes easy
to some and hard to others. It can be taught

(01:37:45):
and learned. We ought to have teachers who are able
to educate us in this department of our natures, quite
as much as in music or art. Think of a
school or classes for training men and women to carry
themselves serenely amid all the trials that beset them. Joy
is the mainspring in the whole of endless nature's calm rotation.

(01:38:05):
Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll in the great
time piece of creation. Shiller that Don't Worry Society was
organized not long ago in New York. It is, however,
just as well suited to other latitudes and longitudes. It
is intended for people who cannot help worrying. If really

(01:38:26):
you can't help it, you are in an abnormal condition.
You have lost self control. It is a mild type
of mental derangement. You must attack your bad habit of
worrying as you would a disease. It is definitely something
to be overcome, an infirmity that you are to get
rid of. Be good and you will be happy. Is
a very old piece of advice. Missus Marriott livermore now

(01:38:49):
proposes to reverse it. Be happy and you will be good.
If unhappiness is a bad habit, you are to turn
about by sheer force of will and practice cheerfulness. Happiness
is a thing to be practiced like a violin. Not work,
but worry, fretfulness, friction. These are our foes in America.
You should not go here and there making prominent either

(01:39:12):
your bad manners or a gloomy face who has a
right to rob other people of their happiness. Do not,
says Emerson, hang a dismal picture on your wall, and
do not deal with sables and glooms in your conversation.
If you are not at the moment cheerful, look, speak,
act as if you were. You know I had no money,

(01:39:33):
I had nothing to give but myself, said a woman
who had great sorrows to bear, but who bore them cheerfully.
I formed a resolution never to sadden any one else
with my troubles. I have laughed and told jokes when
I could have wept. I have always smiled in the
face of every misfortune. I have tried never to let
any one go for my presence without a happy word

(01:39:55):
or a bright thought to carry away and happiness makes happiness.
I myself am happier than I should have been had
I sat down and bemoaned my fate. It is easy
enough to be pleasant when life flows along like a song.
But the man worth while is the one who will
smile when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of
the heart is trouble, and it always comes with the years.

(01:40:17):
And the smile that is worth the praise of the
earth is the smile that comes through tears a pleasure book.
She is an aged woman, but her face is serene
and peaceful. Though trouble has not passed her by. She
seems utterly above the little worries and vexations which torment
the average woman and leave lines of care. The fretful

(01:40:38):
woman asked her one day the secret of her happiness,
and the beautiful old face shone with joy. My dear,
she said, I keep a pleasure book. A what a
pleasure book. Long ago I learned that there is no
day so dark and gloomy that it does not contain
some ray of light. And I have made it one
business of my life to write down the little thing

(01:41:00):
which mean so much to a woman. I have a
book marked for every day of every year since I
left school. It is but a little thing, the new gown,
the chat with a friend, the thoughtfulness of my husband,
a flower, a book, a walk in a field, a letter,
a concert, or a drive. But it all goes into
my pleasure book. And when I am inclined to fret,

(01:41:21):
I read a few pages to see what a happy,
blessed woman I am. You may see my treasures if
you will Slowly, the peevish, discontented woman turned over the book.
Her friend brought her reading a little here and there,
one day's entries ran Thus, had a pleasant letter from mother,
saw a beautiful lily in a window, found the pin

(01:41:43):
I thought I had lost, saw such a bright, happy
girl on the street. Husband brought some roses in the evening.
Bits of verse and lines from her daily reading have
gone into the pleasure book of this world wise woman,
until its pages are a storehouse of truth and beuing.
Have you found a pleasure for every day? The fretful

(01:42:03):
woman asked, for every day? The low voice answered, I
had to make my theory come true. You know. The
fretful woman ought to have stopped there, but did not,
And she found that page where it was written. He
died with his hand in mine and my name upon
his lips. Below were the lines from Lowell Lone Watcher

(01:42:24):
on the mountain height. It is right, precious to behold
the first long surf of climbing light flood all the
thirsty eat with gold. Yet God deems not thine erried
sight more worthy than our twilight dim For meek obedience
too is light, and following that is finding him. In
one of the battles of the crimea a cannon ball
struck inside the fort, crashing through a beautiful garden. But

(01:42:47):
from the ugly chasm there burst forth a spring of
water which is still flowing. And how beautiful it is
if our strange, earthly sorrows become a blessing to others
through our determination to live and to do for those
who need our help. Life is not given for mourning,
but for unselfish service. Cheerfulness, says Ruskin, is as natural

(01:43:08):
to the heart of a man in strong health as
color to his cheek. And wherever there is habitual gloom,
there must be either bad air on wholesome food, improperly
severe labor, or erring habits of life. It is an
erring habit of life. If we are not, first of all, cheerful,
we are thrown into a morbid habit through circumstances utterly
beyond our control. Yet this fact does not change our

(01:43:29):
duty toward God and toward man, our duty to be cheerful.
We are human, but it is our high privilege to
lead a divine life, to accept the joy which our
Lord bequeathed to his disciples. Our trouble is that we
do not half will. After a man's habits are well
set about, all he can do is to sit by
and observe which way he is going, regretted as he may.

(01:43:52):
How helpless is a weak man bound by the mighty
cable of habit, twisted from tiny threads which he thought
were absolutely within his control. Yet a habit of happy
thought would transform his life into harmony and beauty. Is
not the will almost omnipotent to determine habits before they
become all powerful? What contributes more to health or happiness

(01:44:13):
than a vigorous will? A habit of directing a firm
and steady will upon those things which tend to produce
harmony of thought will bring happiness and contentment. The will
rightly drilled and divinely guided can drive out all discordant
thoughts and usher in the reign of perpetual harmony. It
is impossible to overestimate the importance of forming a habit

(01:44:33):
of cheerfulness early in life. The serene optimist is one
whose mind has dwelt so long upon the sunny side
of life that he has acquired a habit of cheerfulness.
Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woes.
No path is wholly rough. Look for the places that
are smooth and clear, and speak of those who rest

(01:44:54):
the weary ear of earth so hurt by one continuous
strain of human discontent in grief and pain. Talk faith.
The world is better off without your uttered ignorance and
morbid doubt. If you have faith in God, or Man
or self, say so. If not, push back upon the
shelf of silence all your thoughts till faith shall come.

(01:45:17):
No one will grieve because your lips are dumb. Talk health.
The dreary, never changing tale of mortal maladies is worn
and stale. You cannot charm, or interest or please by
harping on that minor chord disease. Say you are well,
or all is well with you? And God shall hear

(01:45:37):
your words and make them true. Seven. The Sunshine Man.
There's the dearest little old gentleman, says James Buckham, who
goes into town every morning on the eight point three
zero train. I don't know his name, and yet I
know him better than anybody else in town. He just
radiates cheerfulness. As far as you can see him. There

(01:45:59):
is always smile on his face, and I never heard
him open his mouth except to say something kind, courteous,
or good natured. Everybody bows to him, even strangers, and
he bows to everybody, yet never with the slightest hint
of presumption or familiarity. If the weather is fine, his
jolly compliments make it seem finer. And if it is raining,

(01:46:20):
the merry way in which he speaks of it is
as good as a rainbow. Everybody who goes in on
the eight point three zero train knows the Sunshine Man.
It's his train. You just hurry up a little and
I'll show you the Sunshine Man. This morning. It's foggy
and cold. But if one look at him doesn't cheer
you up so that you'll want to whistle, then I'm
no judge of human nature. Good morning, sir, said mister

(01:46:44):
Jolliboy in going to the same train. Why, Sir, I
don't know you, replied mister never smile. I didn't say
you did, sir. Good morning, sir. The inborn geniality of
some people, says Whipple, amounts to genius. How in our
troubled lives, asks J. Freeman Clark, could we do without

(01:47:07):
these fair, sunny natures into which, on their creation they
God allowed nothing sour, acrid or bitter to enter, but
made them a perpetual solace and comfort by their cheerfulness.
There are those whose very presence carry sunshine with them
wherever they go, A sunshine which means pity for the poor,
sympathy for the suffering, help for the unfortunate, and benignity

(01:47:28):
toward all. Everybody loves the sunny soul. His very face
is a passport anywhere all doors fly open to him.
He disarms prejudice and envy, for he bears goodwill to everybody.
He is as welcome in every household as the sunshine.
He was, quiet, cheerful, genial, says Carlyle in his reminiscences

(01:47:51):
concerning Edward Irving's sunny helpfulness. His soul unruffled, clear as
a mirror, honestly, loving and loved. Berving's voice was to
me one of blessedness and new hope. And to William Wilberforce,
the poet Salvie paid this tribute. I never saw any
other man who seemed to enjoy such perpetual serenity and
sunshine of spirit. I resolved, said tom Hood, that like

(01:48:14):
the sun, so long as my day lasted, I would
look on the bright side of everything. When Goldsmith was
in Flanders, he discovered the happiest man he had ever
seen at his toil. From morning till night. He was
full of song and laughter. Yet this sunny hearted being
was a slave, maimed, deformed, and wearing a chain. How

(01:48:36):
well he illustrated that saying which bids us, if there
is no bright side to polish up the dark one,
mirth is like the flash of lightning that breaks through
the gloom of the clouds and glitters for a moment.
Cheerfulness keeps up a daylight in the soul, filling it
with a steady and perpetual serenity. It is cheerfulness that
has the staying quality, like the sunshine, changing a world

(01:48:58):
of gloom into a paradise of beauty. The first prize
at a flower show was taken by a pale, sickly
little girl who lived in a close, dark court in
the east of London. The judges asked how she could
grow it in such a dingy and sunless place. She
replied that a little ray of sunlight came into the
court as soon as it appeared in the morning. She

(01:49:19):
put her flower beneath it, and as it moved, moved
the flower, so that she kept it in the sunlight
all day. Water, air, and sunshine, the three greatest hygienic
agents are free and within the reach of all. Twelve
years ago, says Walt Whitman, I came to Camden to die,
but every day I went into the country and bathed

(01:49:41):
in the sunshine, lived with the birds and squirrels, and
played in the water with the fishes. I received my
health from nature. It is the unqualified result of all
my experience with the sick. Said Florence Nightingale, that second
only to their need of fresh air is their need
of light. That after a close room, what most hurts
them is a dark room, and that it is not

(01:50:02):
only light but direct sunshine they want sunlight, says doctor L. W.
Curtis in health, culture has much to do in keeping
air in a healthy condition. No plant can grow in
the dark, neither can man remain healthy in a dark,
ill ventilated room. When the first asylum for the blind
was erected in Massachusetts, the committee decided to save expense

(01:50:26):
by not having any windows. They reasoned that as the
patients could not see, there was no need of any light.
It was built without windows, but ventilation was well provided for,
and the poor sightless patients were domiciled in the house.
But things did not go well. One after another began
to sicken, and great languor fell upon them. They felt

(01:50:47):
distressed and restless, craving something they hardly knew what. After
two had died and all were ill, the committee decided
to have windows. The sunlight poured in, and the white
faces has recovered their color. Their flagging energies and depressed
spirits revived, and health was restored. The sun, making all
living things to grow, exerts its happiest influence in cheering

(01:51:11):
the mind of man and making his heart glad. And
if a man has sunshine in his soul, he will
go on his way rejoicing, content to look forward, if
under a cloud, not bating one jot of heart or hope,
if for a moment cast down, honoring his occupation whatever
it be, rendering even rags respectable by the way he
wears them, and not only happy himself, but giving happiness

(01:51:31):
to others. How a man's face shines when illuminated by
a great moral motive, and his manner, too, is touched
with the grace of light. Nothing will supply the want
of sunshine to peaches, said Emerson. And to make knowledge valuable,
you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom. Wondrous is the
strength of cheerfulness, said Carlyle, altogether past calculation, its powers

(01:51:55):
of endurance. Efforts to be permanently useful must be uniformly
joy a spirit all sunshine graceful from very gladness, beautiful
because bright. The cheerful man carries with him perpetually in
his presence and personality, an influence that acts upon others
as summer warmth on the fields and forests. It wakes

(01:52:16):
up and calls out the best that is in them.
It makes them stronger, braver, and happier. Such a man
makes a little spot of this world a lighter, brighter,
warmer place for other people to live in. To meet
him in the morning is to get inspiration, which makes
all the day's struggles and tasks easier. His hearty handshake
puts a thrill of new vigor into your veins. After

(01:52:39):
talking with him for a few minutes, you feel an
exhilaration of spirits, a quickening of energy, a renewal of
zest and interest in living, and are ready for any
duty or service. Great hearts there are among men, says
Hillis of Plymouth pulpit. They carry a volume of manhood.
Their presence is sunshine. Their coming changes are climate. They

(01:53:00):
oil the bearings of life. Their shadow always falls behind them.
They make right living easy. Blessed are the happiness makers.
They represent the best forces in civilization. If refined manners
reprove us a little for ill timed laughter, A smiling
face kindled by a smiling heart is always in order.
Who can ever forget Emerson's smile? It was a perpetual

(01:53:23):
benediction upon all who knew him. A smile is said
to be to the human countenance what sunshine is to
the landscape. Or a smile is called the rainbow of
the face. This is a dark world to many people,
says a suggestive modern writer, a world of chills, a
world of fogs, a world of wet blankets. Nine tenths

(01:53:43):
of the men we meet need encouragement. Your work is
so urgent that you have no time to stop and
speak to the people. But every day you meet scores,
perhaps hundreds and thousands of persons upon whom you might
have direct an immediate influence. How how you cry out,
We answer, by the grace of physiognomy. There is nothing

(01:54:06):
more catching than a face with a lantern behind it,
shining clear through. We have no admiration for a face
with a dry smile, meaning no more than the grin
of a false face, But a smile written by the
hand of God as an index finger or table of
contents to whole volumes of good feeling within is a benediction.

(01:54:27):
You say, my face is hard and lacking immobility, and
my benignant feelings are not observable in the facial proportions.
We do not believe you. Freshness and geniality of the
soul are so subtle and pervading that they will, at
some eye or mouth corner leak out set behind your
face a feeling of gratitude to God and kindliness toward man,

(01:54:48):
and you will every day preach a sermon long as
the streets you walk, a sermon with as many heads
as the number of people you meet, and differing from
other sermons in the fact that the longer it is
the better. The reason that there are so so many
sour faces, so many frowning faces, so many dull faces,
is because men consent to be acrid and petulant and stupid.

(01:55:09):
The way to improve your face is to improve your disposition.
Attractiveness of physiognomy does not depend on regularity of features.
We know persons whose brows are shaggy, eyes oblique, noses
ominously longitudinal, and mouths straggling along in unusual and unexpected directions.
And yet they are men and women of so much
soul that we love to look upon them, and their

(01:55:31):
faces are sweet of angels. It was n P. Willis,
I think who added to the beatitudes. Blessed are the
joy makers. And this is why all the world loves
little children who are always ready to have a sunshine party,
little children bubbling over with fun as a bobblink with song.
How well we remember it all the long gone years

(01:55:53):
of our own childhood, and the households of joyous children
we have known in later years. Joy Makers are the children,
and still some of them in unending scenes of light.
I saw but yesterday this epitaph at Mount Auburn. She
was so pleasant, sunny hearted in life, and now alive
forever more in light, supernal. How can we then but

(01:56:14):
rejoice with joy unspeakable, as the children of immortality, living
habitually above the gloom and damps of earth, and leading
lives of ministration, bestowing everywhere sweetness and light, radiating upon
the earth something of the beauty of the unseen world.
What is a sunny temper but a talisman more powerful
than wealth, more precious than rubies. What is it but

(01:56:35):
an aroma whose fragrance fills the air with the odors
of paradise. I am so full of happiness, said a
little child, that I could not be any happier unless
I could grow. And she bade good morning to her
sweet singing bird, and good morning to the sun. Then
she asked her mother's permission, and softly, reverently, gladly bade

(01:56:56):
good morning to God. And why should she not. Was
it not Gerda who represented a journey that followed the
sunshine round the world, forever bathed in light and longfellow sang.
It is always morning somewhere, and above the awakening countinents,
from shore to shore. Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.

(01:57:16):
The darkness passed. We mount the radiant skies, and changeless
day is ours. We hear the songs of higher spheres,
the light divine. Our eyes behold in sunlight robes of
countless throngs who dwell in light. We seek with joyous
quest God's service, sweet to wipe all tears away. And
list we every hour with eager zest for high command

(01:57:37):
to toils that God has blessed. So fill we full
our endless sunshine day

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CHEERFULNESS AS LIFE POWER: The Unseen Force Behind Success and Prosperity - Orison Swett Marden (1899)

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}CHEERFULNESS AS LIFE POWER: The Unseen Force Behind Success and Prosperity - Orison Swett Marden (1899)