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Make Your Own Sunshine

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 23, 1882

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 8, No. 12.

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Make Your Own Sunshine.

“OH, dear, it always does rain when I want to go!” cried little Jennie Moore, “It’s too bad; now I’ve got to stay indoors all day, and I know I shall have a wretched day.”
“Perhaps so,” said Uncle Jack; “but you need not have a bad day unless you choose.”
“How can I help it? I wanted to go to the Park and hear the band, and take Fido and play on the grass and have a good time, and pull wild flowers, and eat sandwiches under the trees; and now there ain't goin' to be any sunshine at all; and I just have to stand here and see it rain, and see the water run off the duck’s back all day.”
“Well, let’s make a little sunshine,” said Uncle Jack.
“Make sunshine!” said Jennie, “why how you do talk!” and she smiled through her tears. “You haven’t got a sunshine factory, have you!”
“Well, I’m going to start one, right off, if you’ll be my partner,” replied Uncle Jack. “Now let me give you three rules for making sunshine: first don’t think of what might have been, if the day had been better. Second, see how many pleasant things there are left to enjoy; and, lastly, do all you can to make others happy.”
“Well, I’ll try the last first,” and she went to work to amuse her little brother Willie, who was crying. By the time she had him riding a chair and laughing, she was laughing too.
“Well,” said Uncle Jack, “I see you are a good sunshine-maker, for you have got about all you or Willie can hold just now. But let’s try what we can do with the second rule.”
“But I haven’t anything to enjoy, because all my dolls are old, and my picture books are all torn, and—”
“Hold,” said Uncle Jack, “here’s an old newspaper. Now, let’s get some fun out of it.”
“Fun out of a newspaper! why, how you do talk!”
But Uncle Jack showed her how to make a mask by cutting holes in the paper, and how to cut a whole family of dolls, and how to make pretty things for Willie out of the paper. Then he got the tea-tray and showed her how to roll a marble around it.
And so she found many a pleasant amusement, and when bed-time came she kissed Uncle Jack, and said:—
“Good-night, dear Uncle Jack.”
“Good-night, little sunshine-maker,” said Uncle Jack.
And she dreamed that night that Uncle Jack had built a great house, and put a sign over the door, which read:—
SUNSHINE FACTORY. UNCLE JACK AND LITTLE JENNIE.
She made Uncle Jack laugh when she told her dream; but she never forgot what you must remember: A cheerful heart makes its own sunshine.—The Little Folks.