To Be Popular by Lucy Elliott Keeler

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Sep 28, 1905

To Be Popular

By Lucy Elliott Keeler

If you want people to like you — and what girl, indifferent as she may appear, does not ardently desire that? — do not weep or whine. This is a selfish world, and it is not going to stop and ask what is the matter. It only cares for results of the happy kind. If you will smile, it will gladly smile with you; and if it sees that you smile when you would rather cry, it will respect you all the more. There is nothing more debasing to a human being than incessant brooding over his wrongs; and grumbling and fretting, whether silent or spoken, use up just so much force. So be joyous if you can, girls, but good-natured at all hazards. A welcoming, gracious manner and light-heartedness will do more for you than beauty or learning or the riches of India.

“I seek no thorns,” said Goethe’s wise mother to a sentimental maiden, “and I catch the small joys. If the door is low, I stoop down. If I can remove the stone out of my way, I do so. If it is too heavy, I go around it. And thus every day I find something which gladdens me.”—Lucy Elliott Keeler.