A MERRY HEART
Who among us can presume to estimate the value of a merry heart? What
a perpetual blessing it is to its possessor and to all who must come
into close relationship with the owner of it!
There is nothing more pleasantly "catching" than happiness. The happy
person serves to make all about him or her the more happy. What the
bright, inspiring sunshine adds to the beauty of the fields, a happy
disposition adds to the charm of all the incidents and experiences of
one's daily life.
Do not you, whose eyes are perusing these lines, love to associate
with a friend possessing a cheerful disposition? And do you not
intuitively refrain from meeting with the unfortunate one whose looks
and words are heavy with complainings or whose eyes fail to see the
beauty of the world lying all about? And if we are given to wise
thinking we must reach the conclusion that as we regard these
attributes in others, so others must regard them in us.
Nothing is more eloquent than a beautiful face. It is the open sesame
to all our hearts. A sunshiny face melts away all opposition and finds
the word "Welcome" written over the doorways where the face wearing a
hard, unfriendly look sees only the warning, "No Admittance."
But a smile that is only skin deep is not a true smile, but only a
superficial grin. A true smile comes all the way from the heart. It
bears its message of good will and friendliness. It is a mute
salutation of "good luck and happy days to you!" and it makes whoever
receives it better and stronger for the hour.
The genuine smile is closely related to, and is a part of, that
laughter which beams and sparkles in the eye and makes the little,
cheerful, smiling lines in the face that are so quickly and easily
distinguished from the lines that are the outward sign of an unhappy
spirit within.
Many centuries ago that wise and admirable philosopher, Epictetus,
discovered that "happiness is not in strength, or wealth, or power; or
all three. It lies in ourselves, in true freedom, in the conquest of
every ignoble fear, in perfect self-government, in a power of
contentment and peace, and the even flow of life, even in poverty,
exile, disease and the very valley of the shadow."
One of the happiest observers of life and its higher purposes--Anne
Gilchrist--says: "I used to think it was great to disregard happiness,
to press to a high goal, careless, disdainful of it. But now I see
there is nothing so great as to be capable of happiness,--to pluck it
out of each moment, and, whatever happens, to find that one can ride
as gay and buoyant on the angry, menacing, tumultuous waves of life as
on those that glide and glitter under a clear sky; that it is not
defeat and wretchedness which comes out of the storms of adversity,
but strength and calmness."
The strongest incentive for the cultivation of a merry heart is that
it is a duty as well as a delight. Sydney Smith has very wisely
observed that "mankind is always happier for having been happy; so
that if you make them happy now, you may make them happy twenty years
hence by the memory of it."
True happiness has about it no suggestion of selfishness. The
genuinely happy person is the one who would have all the world to be
happy. "Is there any happiness in the world like the happiness of a
disposition made happy by the happiness of others?" asks Faber. "There
is no joy to be compared with it. The luxuries which wealth can buy,
the rewards which ambition can obtain, the pleasures of art and
scenery, the abounding sense of health and the exquisite enjoyment of
mental creations are nothing to this pure and heavenly happiness,
where self is drowned in the blessings of others."
One of the most heavenly attributes of happiness is that it begets
more happiness not only in ourselves but in others about us. It has in
it an uplift and a strength that enables us to build the stronger
to-day against the distress that would beset us to-morrow.
"Health and happiness" are terms that are so often closely linked in
our speech and in our literature. One is almost a synonym for the
other. Perhaps the true significance existing between the two would be
more correctly stated were we to reverse the form in which they are
usually set forth and say "happiness and health" instead. All
observers of human nature and its many complex attributes are
convinced that happiness is the fountain spring of health.
One of our keenest students of life tells us that "small annoyances
are the seeds of disease. We cannot afford to entertain them. They are
the bacteria,--the germs that make serious disturbance in the system,
and prepare the way for all derangements. They furnish the mental
conditions which are manifested later in the blood, the tissues, and
the organs, under various pathological names. Good thoughts are the
only germicide. We must kill our resentment and regret, impatience and
anxiety. Health will inevitably follow. Every thought that holds us in
even the slightest degree to either anticipation or regret hinders, to
some extent, the realization of our present good. It limits freedom.
Life is in the present tense. Its significant name is Being."
Whether we are happy or not depends much on our point of view. The
disposition to look at everything through kind and beautiful eyes
makes all the world more kind and beautiful. If we are gloomy within
the whole world appears likewise. Perhaps the two ways of looking at
things could not be better set forth than in these clever lines by E.
J. Hardy:
"How dismal you look!" said a bucket to his companion, as they were
going to the well.
"Ah!" replied the other, "I was reflecting on the uselessness of our
being filled, for, let us go away never so full, we always come back
empty."
"Dear me! how strange to look on it that way!" said the other bucket;
"now I enjoy the thought that however empty we come, we always go away
full. Only look at it in that light and you will always be as cheerful
as I am."
The difference between the pessimist and the optimist is in their
POINT OF VIEW
Because each rose must have its thorn,
The pessimist Fate's plan opposes;
The optimist, more gladly born,
Rejoices that the thorns have roses.
Since our happiness is merely the reflex influence of the happiness we
make for others it would seem as though the joy of our lives dwells
within our own keeping. "The universe," says Zimmerman, "pays every
man in his own coin; if you smile, it smiles upon you in return; if
you frown, you will be frowned at; if you sing, you will be invited
into gay company; if you think, you will be entertained by thinkers;
if you love the world, and earnestly seek for the good therein, you
will be surrounded by loving friends, and nature will pour into your
lap the treasures of the earth."
All of this being true we must early learn to seize upon opportunities
for making others happy if we, ourselves, would get the most and
highest enjoyment from life. "There are gates that swing within your
life and mine," writes "Amber," that good woman of sainted memory,
"letting in rare opportunities from day to day, that tarry but a
moment and are gone, like travelers bound for points remote. There is
the opportunity to resist the temptation to do a mean thing! Improve
it, for it is in a hurry, like the man whose ticket is bought and
whose time is up. It won't be back this way, either, for opportunities
for good are not like tourists who travel on return tickets. There is
the opportunity to say a pleasant word to the ones within the sound of
your voice. All of the priceless opportunities travel by lightning
express and have no time to idle around the waiting-room. If we
improve them at all it must be when the gate swings to let them
through."
It is in living not for ourselves alone but for others that we are to
find the larger and truer happiness of life. Says Jenkin Lloyd Jones,
"I would rather live in an alley, stayed all round with human loves,
associations and ambitions, than dwell in a palace with drawbridge,
moat, and portcullis, apart from the community about me, alienated
from my neighbors, unable to share the woes and the joys of those with
whom I divide nature's bounty of land and landscape, of air and sky."
And along this same line of thinking, Charles Hargrove says: "Brother,
sister, your mistake is to live alone in a crowded world, to think of
yourself and your own belongings, and what is the matter with you,
instead of trying to realize, what is the fact--that you are a member
of a great human society, and that your true interests are one with
those of the world which will go on much the same however it fare with
you. Live the larger life, and you will find it the happier."
So one of the chief aims of your life and of mine should be to find
happiness and to see to it that others find it as well. And let us not
wait to find happiness in one great offering, but let us discover it
whenever and wherever we can. Let us carefully study our surroundings
to see if it is not hiding all about us. "Very few things," says
Lecky, "contribute so much to the happiness of life as a constant
realization of the blessings we enjoy. The difference between a
naturally contented nature and a naturally discontented one is one of
the marked differences of innate temperament, but we can do much to
cultivate that habit of dwelling on the benefits of our lot which
converts acquiescence into a more positive enjoyment."
Nothing can do more to add to our happiness of mind than to cultivate
the gracious habit of being grateful for joys that come to us and to
seek to appreciate the worth of the beneficent gifts that are ever
being showered upon us. We are so apt to fall into the habit of
accepting blessings as a matter of course and of failing to discover
their wonderful value. How many of us, for example, have ever
thoughtfully dwelt upon the priceless attributes of the air that is
ever and always floating about us. In order that we may have a truer
appreciation of its fine qualities and purposes let us read these
words by Lord Avebury:
"Fresh air, how wonderful it is! It permeates all our body, it bathes
the skin in a medium so delicate that we are not conscious of its
presence, and yet so strong that it wafts the odors of flowers and
fruit into our rooms, carries our ships over the seas, the purity of
sea and mountain into the heart of our cities. It is the vehicle of
sound, it brings to us the voices of those we love and the sweet music
of nature; it is the great reservoir of the rain which waters the
earth, it softens the heat of day and the cold of night, covers us
overhead with a glorious arch of blue, and lights up the morning and
evening skies with fire. It is so exquisitely soft and pure, so gentle
and yet so useful, that no wonder Ariel is the most delicate, lovable
and fascinating of all Nature Spirits."
It is only when we open our eyes to the beauty of the wonders about us
that we see how much there is to contribute to our happiness if we
will but open our hearts and let it come in. What a perpetual
exaltation nature will afford us when we have cultivated the fine
habit of looking upon it with the welcoming eyes through which Richard
Jefferies beholds it: "The whole time in the open air," he tells us,
"resting at mid-day under the elms with the ripple of heat flowing
through the shadow; at midnight between the ripe corn and the
hawthorne hedge or the white camomile and the poppy pale in the
duskiness, with face upturned to the thoughtful heaven. Consider the
glory of it, the life above this life to be obtained from constant
presence with the sunlight and the stars."
So let us cultivate the fine habit of finding joy and of shouting it
to our friends and neighbors. Life seems bright to us when we are
really glad of anything and we let gladness have voice to express
itself. George MacDonald says "a poet is a man who is glad of
something and tries to make other people glad of it, too." In the
possession of this kindly spirit, at least, we must all strive to be
poets.
Emerson tells us that "there is one topic positively forbidden to all
well-bred, to all rational mortals, namely, their distempers. If you
have not slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or
thunder stroke, I beseech you, by all the angels, to hold your peace,
and not pollute the morning, to which all the housemates bring serene
and pleasant thoughts, by corruption and groans."
The fine tonic effect of a bright, happy face smiling across the
breakfast table is known to all the world. Better a feast of corn
bread and a cheerful countenance than fruit cake and a sour
temperament.
So I feel very sure that you, my dear young lady, for whom these lines
are written, are never going to appear at the breakfast table with
aught other than a bright cheery face and a pleasant word for all
about you. Some one has said that the first hour of the day is the
critical one. Happy is the person who can wake with a song, or who can
at least hold back the fears and the grumbles until a thought of
gladness has established itself as the keynote of the day.
"Assume a virtue, if you have it not," says Shakespeare. While as a
rule it is deemed wrong to assume to possess any virtue that we do not
possess, we may and no doubt should, at times, appear to be happy even
though we may feel more like indulging in lamentations. To come to the
breakfast table enumerating a list of real or imaginary ailments is a
most ill-advised thing to do. We should endeavor to forget our
troubles and above all we should be slow to give voice to them so that
thereby they will be multiplied in the minds of others. It has been
truly said that most people who are unhappy are really miserable and
bring their misery to others because they allow the failures and
discomforts to speak the first word in their souls. For misery is
voluble and the little discomforts will turn us into their continual
mouthpieces if we will give them a chance. But the truly thoughtful
and considerate person will have none of them. Instead of displaying
the flag of distress and surrender, the wiser method is to pull our
courage and determination together and don
THE BETTER ARMOR
If through thick and through thin
You are eager to win,
Don't go shrouded in Fear and in Doubt,
But with Hope and with Truth
And the blue sky of Youth
Go through life with the sunny side out.
So let us determine that we will cultivate the happy habit; for indeed
even happiness is largely a habit. "As he thinketh in his heart, so is
he." If he thinks trouble, he is very likely to find it. If he thinks
sickness, he is likely to be ill. If he thinks unkind things, he is
quite sure to put them into the deeds of his daily life. The thought
is the architect's plans which the hands are likely to set about to
build. To the one who thinks the weather is bad, it is sure to be
disagreeable. To the one who seeks to find something pleasant about
it, it is certain to offer some happy phases.
We must all answer "yes" to this question asked by one of our fine
writers on our social amenities: "Don't you get awfully tired of
people who are always croaking? A frog in a big, damp, malarial pond
is expected to make all the fuss he can in protest of his
surroundings. But a man! Destined for a crown, and born that he may be
educated for the court of a king! Placed in an emerald world with a
hither side of opaline shadow, and a fine dust of diamonds to set it
sparkling when winter days are flying; with ten million singing birds
to make it musical, and twice ten million flowers to make it sweet;
with countless stars to light it up with fiery splendor, and white,
new moons to wrap it round with mystery; with other souls within it to
love and make happy, and the hand of God to uphold it on its rushing
way among the countless worlds that crowd its path; what right has man
to find fault with such a world? When the woodtick shall gain a
hearing, as he complains that the grand old century oak is unfit to
shelter him, or the bluebird be harkened to when he murmurs that the
horizon is off color, and does not match his wings, then, I think, it
will be time for man to find fault with the appointments of the
magnificent sphere in which he lives."
Therefore let it be determined between us, right here and now, that
come what may, we shall each of us endeavor to keep a merry heart and
a pleasant face. As we love to see a happy expression on the faces of
our parents, brothers, sisters and friends, so must they enjoy seeing
a pleasant look overspreading our features. And with this good and
kindly resolve in our minds it will never be difficult for us to
decide whether we shall give to the good world about us the gladness
or the gloom that is embodied in
SONG OR SIGH
If you were a bird and shut in a cage,
Now what would you better do,--
Would you grieve your throat with a sorry note
And mourn the whole day through;
Or would you swing and chirp and sing,
Though the world were warped with wrong,
Till you filled one place with the perfect grace
And gladness of your song?
If you were a man and shut in a world,
Now what would you better do,--
On a gloomy day, when skies were gray,
Would you be gloomy, too?
When crossed with care would you let despair
Life's happy hope destroy,
Or with a smile work on the while
You found the path to joy?
[Illustration: FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE]
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[Transcriber's Note: Sidenote quotations from the preceeding chapter are
gathered in this section.]
Mirth is God's medicine; everybody ought to bathe in it.--Holmes.
The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud.--Elizabeth Barrett
Browning.
A gay, serene spirit is the source of all that is noble and good.
--Schiller.
Your manners will depend very much on what you frequently think on;
for the soul is as it were tinged with the color and complexion of
thought.--Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff
life is made of.--Benjamin Franklin.
Be yourself, but make yourself in everything as delightful as you
can.--Margaret E. Sangster.
The tissue of the life to be we weave with colors all our own, and in
the field of destiny we reap as we have sown.--Whittier.
What must of necessity be done you can always find out beyond question
how to do.--Ruskin.
The doctrine of love, purity, and right living has, step by step, won
its way into the hearts of mankind, and has filled the future with
hope and promise.--William McKinley.
Since time is not a person we can overtake when he is past, let us
honor him with mirth and cheerfulness of heart while he is passing.
--Goethe.
Every wish is a prayer with God.--Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Say not always what you know, but always know what you say.--Claudius.
Evil is wrought by want of thought, as well as want of heart.--Hood.
Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every
time we fall.--Goldsmith.
So use present pleasures that thou spoilest not future ones.--Seneca.
A good manner springs from a good heart, and fine manners are the
outcome of unselfish kindness.--Margaret E. Sangster.
Reading and study are in no sense education, unless they may
contribute to this end of making us feel kindly towards all
creatures.--Ruskin.
An hour in every day withdrawn from frivolous pursuits would, if
properly employed, enable a person of ordinary capacity, to go far
toward mastering a science.--Samuel Smiles.
To live with a high ideal is a successful life. It is not what one
does, but what one tries to do, that makes the soul strong and fit for
noble career.--E. P. Tenney.
He who loses money loses much; he who loses a friend loses more, but
he who loses spirit loses all.--S. A. Nelson.
If you tell the truth, you have infinite power supporting you; but if
not, you have infinite power against you.--Charles G. Gordon.
Great hearts alone understand how much glory there is in being good.
To be and keep so is not the gift of a happy nature alone, but it is
strength and heroism.--Jules Michelet.
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths.--Bailey.
Remember that everybody's business in the social system is to be
agreeable.--Dickens.
In the lexicon of youth there is no such word as fail.--Bulwer Lytton.
Be noble! and the nobleness that lies in other men, sleeping, but
never dead, will rise in majesty to meet thine own.--Lowell.
The cheerful live longest in years, and afterward in our regards.
--Bovee.
How sweet and gracious, even in common speech, is that fine sense
which men call Courtesy!--James T. Fields.
Make each goal when reached, a starting point for further quest.
--Browning.
The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be
as happy as kings.--Robert Louis Stevenson.
God bless the good-natured, for they bless everybody else.--Beecher.
If you are acquainted with Happiness, introduce him to your neighbor.
--Phillips Brooks.
Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st, live well; how long
or short, permit to heaven.--Milton.
The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.
--Chamfort.
It is impossible to be just if one is not generous.--Joseph Roux.
People glorify all sorts of bravery, except the bravery they might
show on behalf of their nearest neighbors.--George Eliot.
How active springs the mind that leaves the load of yesterday behind.
--Pope.
One of the most charming things in girlhood is serenity.--Margaret E.
Sangster.
Every generous nature desires to make the earning of an honest living
but a means to the higher end of adding to the sum total of human
goodness and human happiness.--Frances E. Willard.
Attempt the end, and never stand in doubt; nothing's so hard but
search will find it out.--Richard Lovelace.
There is only one way to get ready for immortality, and that is to
love this life and live it as bravely and cheerfully and faithfully as
we can.--Henry Van Dyke.
He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes books.
--Benjamin Franklin.
Anxiety never yet successfully bridged over any chasm.--Ruffini.
How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but
by degrees?--Shakespeare.
Duty determines destiny. Destiny which results from duty performed,
may bring anxiety and perils, but never failure and dishonor.--William
McKinley.
If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.
--Emily Dickinson.
No book is worth anything which is not worth much; nor is it
serviceable, until it has been read, and reread, and loved, and loved
again.--Ruskin.
Wise, cultivated, genial conversation is the best flower of
civilization.--Emerson.
It is so easy to perceive other people's little absurdities, and so
difficult to discover our own.--Ellen Thornycroft Fowler.
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