Cheap Pleasure | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 1, 1877

Cheap Pleasure.

Do you ever study the cheapness of some pleasure? asks some writer. Do you know how little it takes to make a multitude happy? Such trifles as a penny, a word, or a smile, do the work. There are two or three boys passing along—give them each a chestnut, and how smiling they look! they will not be cross for some time. A poor widow lives in the neighborhood, who is the mother of half a dozen children. Send them half a peck of sweet apples, and they will be happy.

A child has lost his arrow—the world to him—and he mourns sadly; help him to find it, or make him another, and how quickly will the sunshine play over his sober face. A boy has as much as he can do to pile up a load of wood; assist him a few moments, or speak a pleasant word to him, and he forgets his toil, and works away without minding it. Your apprentice has broken a mug, or cut the vest too large, or slightly injured a piece of work. Say, “You scoundrel,” and he feels miserable; but remark, “I am sorry,” and he will try to do better.

You employ a man; pay him cheerfully, and speak a pleasant word to him, and he leaves your house with a contented heart, to light up his own hearth with smiles and gladness.

As you pass along the street, you meet a familiar face; say “Good morning,” as though you felt happy, and it will work admirably in the heart of your neighbor. Pleasure is cheap. Who will not bestow it liberally? If there are smiles, sunshine, and flowers all about us, let us not grasp them with a miser’s fist, and lock them up in our hearts. No, rather let us take them and scatter them about us, in the cot of the widow, among the groups of children in the crowded mart, where men of business congregate

in our families, and everywhere. We can make the wretched happy, the discontented cheerful, the afflicted resigned, at an exceedingly cheap rate. Who will refuse to do it?