Chapter 3

"'By no means,' replied her grandfather. 'They cost something; but if we can make labor easier to a horse by giving him a little music, which he loves, he is less worn by his work, and that is a saving worth thinking of. A horse is a generous, noble-spirited animal, and not without intellect, either; and he is capable of much enjoyment from music.'"

A spirit of song, if not the singing itself, is a constant delight to us. "It is like passing sweet meadows alive with bobolinks."

"Some men," says Beecher, "move through life as a band of music moves down the street, flinging out pleasures on every side, through the air, to every one far and near who can listen; others fill the air with harsh clang and clangor. Many men go through life carrying their tongue, their temper, their whole disposition so that wherever they go, others dread them. Some men fill the air with their presence and sweetness, as orchards in October days fill the air with the perfume of ripe fruit."

GOOD HUMOR.

"Health and good humor," said Massillon, "are to the human body like sunshine to vegetation."

The late Charles A. Dana fairly bubbled over with the enjoyment of his work, and was, up to his last illness, at his office every day. A Cabinet officer once said to him: "Well, Mr. Dana, I don't see how you stand this infernal grind."

"Grind?" said Mr. Dana. "You never were more mistaken. I have nothing but fun."

"Bully" was a favorite word with him; a slang word used to express uncommon pleasure, such as had been afforded by a trip abroad, or by a run to Cuba or Mexico, or by the perusal of something especially pleasing in the "Sun's" columns.

"One of my neighbors is a very ill-tempered man," said Nathan Rothschild. "He tries to vex me, and has built a great place for swine close to my walk. So, when I go out, I hear first, 'Grunt, grunt,' then 'Squeak, squeak.' But this does me no harm. I am always in good humor."

Offended by a pungent article, a gentleman called at the "Tribune" office and inquired for the editor. He was shown into a little seven-by-nine sanctum, where Greeley sat, with his head close down to his paper, scribbling away at a two-forty rate. The angry man began by asking if this was Mr. Greeley. "Yes, sir; what do you want?" said the editor quickly, without once looking up from his paper. The irate visitor then began using his tongue, with no reference to the rules of propriety, good breeding, or reason. Meantime Mr. Greeley continued to write. Page after page was dashed off in the most impetuous style, with no change of features, and without paying the slightest attention to the visitor. Finally, after about twenty minutes of the most impassioned scolding ever poured out in an editor's office, the angry man became disgusted, and abruptly turned to walk out of the room. Then, for the first time, Mr. Greeley quickly looked up, rose from his chair, and, slapping the gentleman familiarly on his shoulder, in a pleasant tone of voice said: "Don't go, friend; sit down, sit down, and free your mind; it will do you good,--you will feel better for it. Besides, it helps me to think what I am to write about. Don't go."

"One good hearty laugh," says Talmage, "is like a bomb-shell exploding in the right place, and spleen and discontent like a gun that kicks over the man shooting it off."

"Every one," says Lubbock, "likes a man who can enjoy a laugh at his own expense,--and justly so, for it shows good humor and good sense. If you laugh at yourself, other people will not laugh at you."

People differ very much in their sense of humor. As some are deaf to certain sounds and blind to certain colors, so there are those who seem deaf and blind to certain pleasures. What makes me laugh until I almost go into convulsions moves them not at all.

Is it not worth while to make an effort to see the funny side of our petty annoyances? How could the two boys but laugh, after they had contended long over the possession of a box found by the wayside, when they agreed to divide its contents, and found nothing in it?

The ability to get on with scolding, irritating people is a great art in doing business. To preserve serenity amid petty trials is a happy gift.

A sunny temper is also conducive to health. A medical authority of highest repute affirms that "excessive labor, exposure to wet and cold, deprivation of sufficient quantities of necessary and wholesome food, habitual bad lodging, sloth, and intemperance are all deadly enemies to human life, but they are none of them so bad as violent and ungoverned passions;" that men and women have frequently lived to an advanced age in spite of these; but that instances are very rare in which people of irascible tempers live to extreme old age.

Poultney Bigelow, in "Harper's Magazine," in relating the story of Jameson's raid upon the Boers of South Africa, says that the triumphant Boers fell on their knees, thanking God for their victory; and that they prayed for their enemies, and treated their prisoners with the utmost kindness. Our foreign missionary books relate similar anecdotes, it being a characteristic feature of their childlike piety for new converts to take literally the words of our Lord,--"Love your enemies."

It is not true that the devil has his tail in everything. A stalwart confidence in God, and faith in the happy outcome of life, will do more to lubricate the creaking machinery of our daily affairs than anything else.

"LE DIABLE EST MORT."

"_Courage, ami, le diable est mort!_" "Courage, friend, the devil is dead!" was Denys's constant countersign, which he would give to everybody. "They don't understand it," he would say, "but it wakes them up. I carry the good news from city to city, to uplift men's hearts." Once he came across a child who had broken a pitcher. "_Courage, amie, le diable est mort!_" said he, which was such cheering news that she ceased crying, and ran home to tell it to her grandma.

Give me the man who, like Emerson, sees longevity in his cause, and who believes there is a remedy for every wrong, a satisfaction for every longing soul; the man who believes the best of everybody, and who sees beauty and grace where others see ugliness and deformity. Give me the man who believes in the ultimate triumph of truth over error, of harmony over discord, of love over hate, of purity over vice, of light over darkness, of life over death. Such men are the true nation-builders.

Jay Cooke, many times a millionaire at the age of fifty-one, at fifty-two practically penniless, went to work again and built another fortune. The last of his three thousand creditors was paid, and the promise of the great financier was fulfilled. To a visitor who once asked him how he regained his fortune, Mr. Cooke replied, "That is simple enough: by never changing the temperament I derived from my father and mother. From my earliest experience in life I have always been of a hopeful temperament, never living in a cloud; I have always had a reasonable philosophy to think that men and times are better than harsh criticism would suppose. I believed that this American world of ours is full of wealth, and that it was only necessary to go to work and find it. That is the secret of my success in life. Always look on the sunny side."

"Everything has gone," said a New York business man in despair, when he reached home. But when he came to himself he found that his wife and his children and the promises of God were left to him. Suffering, it was said by Aristotle, becomes beautiful when any one bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility, but through greatness of mind.

When Garrison was locked up in the Boston city jail he said he had two delightful companions,--a good conscience and a cheerful mind.

"To live as always seeing The invisible Source of things, Is the blessedest state of being, For the quietude it brings."

"Away with those fellows who go howling through life," wrote Beccher, "and all the while passing for birds of paradise! He that cannot laugh and be gay should look to himself. He should fast and pray until his face breaks forth into light."

Martin Luther has told us that he was once sorely discouraged and vexed at himself, the world, and the church, and at the small success he then seemed to be having; and he fell into a despondency which affected all his household. His good wife could not charm it away by cheerful speech or acts. At length she hit upon this happy device, which proved effectual. She appeared before him in deep mourning.

"Who is dead?" asked Luther.

"Oh, do you not know, Martin? God in heaven is dead."

"How can you talk such nonsense, Kaethe? How can God die? Why, He is immortal, and will live through all eternity."

"Is that really true?" persisted she, as if she could hardly credit his assertion that God still lived.

"How can you doubt it? So surely as there is a God in heaven," asserted the aroused theologian, "so sure is it that He can never die."

"And yet," said she demurely, in a tone which made him look up at her, "though you do not doubt there is a God, you become hopeless and discouraged as if there were none. It seemed to me you acted as if God were dead."

The spell was broken; Luther heartily laughed at his wife's lesson, and her ingenious way of presenting it. "I observed," he remarked, "what a wise woman my wife was, who mastered my sadness."

Jean Paul Richter's dream of "No God" is one of the most somber things in all literature,--"tempestuous chaos, no healing hand, no Infinite Father. I awoke. My soul wept for joy that it could again worship the Infinite Father.... And when I arose, from all nature I heard flowing sweet, peaceful tones, as from evening bells."

IV. TAKING YOUR FUN EVERY DAY AS YOU DO YOUR WORK.

Ten things are necessary for happiness in this life, the first being a good digestion, and the other nine,--money; so at least it is said by our modern philosophers. Yet the author of "A Gentle Life" speaks more truly in saying that the Divine creation includes thousands of superfluous joys which are totally unnecessary to the bare support of life.

He alone is the happy man who has learned to extract happiness, not from ideal conditions, but from the actual ones about him. The man who has mastered the secret will not wait for ideal surroundings; he will not wait until next year, next decade, until he gets rich, until he can travel abroad, until he can afford to surround himself with works of the great masters; but he will make the most out of life to-day, where he is.

"Why thus longing, thus forever sighing, For the far-off, unattained and dim, While the beautiful, all round thee lying, Offers up its low, perpetual hymn?

"Happy the man, and happy he alone, He who can call to-day his own; He who, secure within himself, can say: 'To-morrow, do thy worst, for I have lived to-day!'"

Paradise is here or nowhere: you must take your joy with you or you will never find it.

It is after business hours, not in them, that men break down. Men must, like Philip Armour, turn the key on business when they leave it, and at once unlock the doors of some wholesome recreation. Dr. Lyman Beecher used to divert himself with a violin. He had a regular system of what he called "unwinding," thus relieving the great strain put upon him.

"A man," says Dr. Johnson, "should spend part of his time with the laughers."

Humor was Lincoln's life-preserver, as it has been of thousands of others. "If it were not for this," he used to say, "I should die." His jests and quaint stories lighted the gloom of dark hours of national peril.

"Next to virtue," said Agnes Strickland, "the fun in this world is what we can least spare."

"When the harness is off," said Judge Haliburton, "a critter likes to kick up his heels."

"I have fun from morning till night," said the editor Charles A. Dana to a friend who was growing prematurely old. "Do you read novels, and play billiards, and walk a great deal?"

Gladstone early formed a habit of looking on the bright side of things, and never lost a moment's sleep by worrying about public business.

There are many out-of-door sports, and the very presence of nature is to many a great joy. How true it is that, if we are cheerful and contented, all nature smiles with us,--the air seems more balmy, the sky more clear, the earth has a brighter green, the trees have a richer foliage, the flowers are more fragrant, the birds sing more sweetly, and the sun, moon, and stars all appear more beautiful. "It is a grand thing to live,--to open the eyes in the morning and look out upon the world, to drink in the pure air and enjoy the sweet sunshine, to feel the pulse bound, and the being thrill with the consciousness of strength and power in every nerve; it is a good thing simply to be alive, and it is a good world we live in, in spite of the abuse we are fond of giving it."

"I love to hear the bee sing amid the blossoms sunny; To me his drowsy melody is sweeter than his honey: For, while the shades are shifting Along the path to noon, My happy brain goes drifting To dreamland on his tune.

"I love to hear the wind blow amid the blushing petals, And when a fragile flower falls, to watch it as it settles; And view each leaflet falling Upon the emerald turf, With idle mind recalling The bubbles on the surf.

"I love to lie upon the grass, and let my glances wander Earthward and skyward there; while peacefully I ponder How much of purest pleasure Earth holds for his delight Who takes life's cup to measure Naught but its blessings bright."

Upon every side of us are to be found what one has happily called--

UNWORKED JOY MINES.

And he who goes "prospecting" to see what he can daily discover is a wise man, training his eye to see beauty in everything and everywhere.

"One ought, every day," says Goethe, "at least to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." And if this be good for one's self, why not try the song, the poem, the picture, and the good words, on some one else?

Shall music and poetry die out of you while you are struggling for that which can never enrich the character, nor add to the soul's worth? Shall a disciplined imagination fill the mind with beautiful pictures? He who has intellectual resources to fall back upon will not lack for daily recreation most wholesome.

It was a remark of Archbishop Whately that we ought not only to cultivate the cornfields of the mind, but the pleasure-grounds also. A well-balanced life is a cheerful life; a happy union of fine qualities and unruffled temper, a clear judgment, and well-proportioned faculties. In a corner of his desk, Lincoln kept a copy of the latest humorous work; and it was frequently his habit, when fatigued, annoyed, or depressed, to take this up, and read a chapter with great relief. Clean, sensible wit, or sheer nonsense,--anything to provoke mirth and make a man jollier,--this, too, is a gift from Heaven.

In the world of books, what is grand and inspiring may easily become a part of every man's life. A fondness for good literature, for good fiction, for travel, for history, and for biography,--what is better than this?

THE QUEEN OF THE WORLD.

This title best fits Victoria, the true queen of the world, but it fits her best because she is the best type of a noble wife, the queen of her husband's heart, and of a queen mother whose children rise up and call her blessed.

"I noticed," said Franklin, "a mechanic, among a number of others, at work on a house a little way from my office, who always appeared to be in a merry humor; he had a kind word and smile for every one he met. Let the day be ever so cold, gloomy, or sunless, a happy smile danced on his cheerful countenance. Meeting him one morning, I asked him to tell me the secret of his constant flow of spirits.

"'It is no secret, doctor,' he replied. 'I have one of the best of wives; and, when I go to work, she always has a kind word of encouragement for me; and, when I go home, she meets me with a smile and a kiss; and then tea is sure to be ready, and she has done so many little things through the day to please me that I cannot find it in my heart to speak an unkind word to anybody.'"

Some of the happiest homes I have ever been in, ideal homes, where intelligence, peace, and harmony dwell, have been homes of poor people. No rich carpets covered the floors; there were no costly paintings on the walls, no piano, no library, no works of art. But there were contented minds, devoted and unselfish lives, each contributing as much as possible to the happiness of all, and endeavoring to compensate by intelligence and kindness for the poverty of their surroundings. "One cheerful, bright, and contented spirit in a household will uplift the tone of all the rest. The keynote of the home is in the hand of the resolutely cheerful member of the family, and he or she will set the pitch for the rest."

"Young men," it is said, "are apt to be overbearing, imperious, brusque in their manner; they need that suavity of manner, and urbanity of demeanor, gracefulness of expression and delicacy of manner, which can only be gained by association with the female character, which possesses the delicate instinct, ready judgment, acute perceptions, wonderful intuition. The blending of the male and female characteristics produces the grandest character in each."

The woman who has what Helen Hunt so aptly called "a genius for affection,"--she, indeed, is queen of the home. "I have often had occasion," said Washington Irving, "to remark the fortitude with which woman sustains the most overwhelming reverses of fortune. Those disasters which break down the spirit of a man, and prostrate him in the dust, seem to call forth all the energies of the softer sex, and give such intrepidity and elevation to their character that at times it approaches sublimity."

If a wife cannot make her home bright and happy, so that it shall be the cleanest, sweetest, cheerfulest place her husband can find refuge in,--a retreat from the toils and troubles of the outer world,--then God help the poor man, for he is virtually homeless. "Home-keeping hearts," said Longfellow, "are happiest." What is a good wife, a good mother? Is she not a gift out of heaven, sacred and delicate, with affections so great that no measuring line short of that of the infinite God can tell their bound; fashioned to refine and soothe and lift and irradiate home and society and the world; of such value that no one can appreciate it, unless his mother lived long enough to let him understand it, or unless, in some great crisis of life, when all else failed him, he had a wife to reenforce him with a faith in God that nothing could disturb?

Nothing can be more delightful than an anecdote of Joseph H. Choate, of New York, our Minister at the Court of St. James. Upon being asked, at a dinner-party, who he would prefer to be if he could not be himself, he hesitated a moment, apparently running over in his mind the great ones on earth, when his eyes rested on Mrs. Choate at the other end of the table, who was watching him with great interest in her face, and suddenly replied, "If I could not be myself, I should like to be Mrs. Choate's second husband."

"Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and health to the bones." It is the little disputes, little fault-findings, little insinuations, little reflections, sharp criticisms, fretfulness and impatience, little unkindnesses, slurs, little discourtesies, bad temper, that create most of the discord and unhappiness in the family. How much it would add to the glory of the homes of the world if that might be said of every one which Rogers said of Lord Holland's sunshiny face: "He always comes to breakfast like a man upon whom some sudden good fortune has fallen"!

The value of pleasant words every day, as you go along, is well depicted by Aunt Jerusha in what she said to our genial friend of "Zion's Herald":--

"If folks could have their funerals when they are alive and well and struggling along, what a help it would be"! she sighed, upon returning from a funeral, wondering how poor Mrs. Brown would have felt if she could have heard what the minister said. "Poor soul, she never dreamed they set so much by her!

"Mis' Brown got discouraged. Ye see, Deacon Brown, he'd got a way of blaming everything on to her. I don't suppose the deacon meant it,--'twas just his way,--but it's awful wearing. When things wore out or broke, he acted just as if Mis' Brown did it herself on purpose; and they all caught it, like the measles or the whooping-cough.

"And the minister a-telling how the deacon brought his young wife here when 't wa'n't nothing but a wilderness, and how patiently she bore hardship, and what a good wife she'd been! Now the minister wouldn't have known anything about that if the deacon hadn't told him. Dear! Dear! If he'd only told Mis' Brown herself what he thought, I do believe he might have saved the funeral.

"And when the minister said how the children would miss their mother, seemed as though they couldn't stand it, poor things!

"Well, I guess it is true enough,--Mis' Brown was always doing for some of them. When they was singing about sweet rest in heaven, I couldn't help thinking that that was something Mis' Brown would have to get used to, for she never had none of it here.

"She'd have been awful pleased with the flowers. They was pretty, and no mistake. Ye see, the deacon wa'n't never willing for her to have a flower-bed. He said 't was enough prettier sight to see good cabbages a-growing; but Mis' Brown always kind of hankered after sweet-smelling things, like roses and such.

"What did you say, Levi? 'Most time for supper? Well, land's sake, so it is! I must have got to meditating. I've been a-thinking, Levi, you needn't tell the minister anything about me. If the pancakes and pumpkin pies are good, you just say so as we go along. It ain't best to keep everything laid up for funerals."

_It is the grand secret of a happy home to express the affection you really have._

"He is the happiest," it was said by Goethe, "be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home." There are indeed many serious, too serious-minded fathers and mothers who do not wish to advertise their children to all the neighbors as "the laughing family." If this be so, yet, at the very least, these solemn parents may read the Bible. Where it is said, "provoke not your children to wrath," it means literally, "do not irritate your children;" "do not rub them up the wrong way."

Children ought never to get the impression that they live in a hopeless, cheerless, cold world; but the household cheerfulness should transform their lives like sunlight, making their hearts glad with little things, rejoicing upon small occasion.

"How beautiful would our home-life be if every little child at the bed-time hour could look into the faces of the older ones and say: 'We've had such sweet times to-day.'"

"To love, and to be loved," says Sydney Smith, "is the greatest happiness of existence."

V. FINDING WHAT YOU DO NOT SEEK.