"I was appointed to lecture in a town in Great Britain six miles from
the railway," said John B. Gough, "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 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 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 pane to keep the wind from me, are you?" "Yes, sir, I am." "Why
do you do that?" "God bless you, sir! I owe 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_; 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 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 at Tours, who
took scissors to divide their last remnant of bedclothing with an old
woman who came to them at night, craving hospitality! And 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 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 parding, and
it kind o' took me off my feet." A young lady 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 parding, Miss,
and welcome; and the next time you run agin me, 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. It is like lighting another
man's candle with your own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what
the other gains."
Sydney 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 preeminently useful.
Dr. Raffles 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 Dr.
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,
nohow I could fix it. But I made myself 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 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 a magician came to the court. He saw the scowl on the boy's
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. 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.
"Happiness," 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,--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, 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. 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 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 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 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:--
"PHILLIPS BROOKS."
"What a gift it is," said Beecher, who was the great preacher of
cheerfulness, "to 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, 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 bless
him, for he blesses everybody!" This is just what Mr. 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 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 Dr. 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, 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, "no success without honor; no happiness without
a clear conscience; no use in living at all if only for one's self. 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."
"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 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 heaven-aided powers, and a
high-minded cheerfulness, like that of a celestial spirit. It is 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 the passion slain,
And the vanquished ills that we hourly 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 ecstacies 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 to hope for; and our "joy is the grace we
say to God." "When I think upon God," said Haydn to Carpani, "my heart
is so full of joy that the notes leap from my pen."