It is probably quite within bounds to say that one out 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 see 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; it is too hot or too cold, too damp
or too dry. The roads are either muddy or dusty.
"I met Mr. N. one wet morning," says Dr. 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 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, Mr.
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 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, 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,
here you are with your wagon loaded down. Things didn't turn out so
badly, after all,--eh?" "Well, no-o," 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 Pepys's "Diary" 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.
"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 who predict
evil, extinguish hope, and see only the worst side,--"people whose very
look curdles the milk and sets your teeth on edge." They are often
worthy people who think that pleasure is wrong; people, said 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
prayer-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.
"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." 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 the world is out
of joint, everything is cross-grained and 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 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?"
This is the question a farmer's boy asked of his father.
"Well, John," replied his father, "you know I can't give ye the
dictionary meanin' of that word any more 'n I can of a great many
others. But I've got a kind of an idee what it means. Probably you don't
remember your Uncle Henry; but I guess if there ever was an optimist, he
was one. Things was always comin' out right with Henry, and especially
anything hard that he had to do; it wa' n't a-goin' to be hard,--'t was
jest kind of solid-pleasant.
"Take hoein' corn, now. If anything ever tuckered me out, 'twas hoein'
corn in the hot sun. But in the field, 'long about the time I begun to
lag back a little, Henry he'd look up an' say:--
"'Good, Jim! When we get these two rows hoed, an' eighteen more, the
piece'll be half done.' An' he'd say it in such a kind of a cheerful way
that I couldn't 'a' ben any more tickled if the piece had been all
done,--an' the rest would go light enough.
"But the worst thing we had to do--hoein corn was a picnic to it--was
pickin' stones. There was no end to that on our old farm, if we wanted
to raise anything. When we wa'n't hurried and pressed with somethin'
else, there was always pickin' stones to do; and there wa'n't a plowin'
but what brought up a fresh crop, an' seems as if the pickin' had all to
be done over again.
"Well, you'd' a' thought, to hear Henry, that there wa'n't any fun in
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
wa'n't fit to cut yet, an' I'd got all laid out to go fishin', and
father he up and set us to pickin' stones up on the west piece, an' I
was about ready to cry, Henry he says:--
"'Come on, Jim. I know where there's lots of nuggets.'
"An' what do you s'pose, now? That boy had a kind of a game that that
there field was what he called a plasser mining field; and he got me
into it, and I could 'a' sworn I was in Californy 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 with these nuggets is to get rid of 'em, instead of to get
'em.'
"That somehow didn't strike my fancy, but we'd had play instead of work,
anyway, an' a great lot of stones had been rooted out of that field.
"An', as I said before, I can't give ye any dictionary definition of
optimism; but if your Uncle Henry wa'n't an optimist, I don't know what
one is."
At life's outset, 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 "buts," and "I told you so's." We 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 thunder-storm,
or who is forever complaining of hard times and his hard lot. It is the
bright, cheerful, hopeful, 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.