Cheerfulness as a Health Factor
“A MAN’S house,” says Beecher, “should be on the hilltop of cheerfulness and serenity, so high that no shadows rest upon it, and where the morning comes so early, and the evening tarries so late, that the day has twice as many golden hours as those of other men. He is to be pitied whose house is in some valley of grief between the hills, with the longest nights and shortest days.” It is not an easy matter to build this mental mansion on the “hilltop of cheerfulness and serenity,” but how much more comfortable it is to live in than the house in the “valley of grief between the hills”! It is not easy to be bright and cheerful when our best-laid plans “gang aglee;” when the balance sheets will not balance; when the typewriter or sewing-machine will not move swiftly and rapidly, in spite of the fact that the machinery is apparently in good order; when it rains steadily and persistently on the very day when you wished the sun to appear the brightest; when you must wear for another season the shabby gown or jacket which you had hoped to replace with a new one. It is hard to give a sunny smile to the world when, for you, “the times are out of joint.” Make the effort, though, and see how you will be repaid, and what a golden reflection that little smile will throw back on your world within. “No man e’er gained a happy life by chance, Or yawned it into being with a wish.” — Selected.