Cheerfulness as a Life Power Part 4

"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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sing 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? G.o.d in heaven is dead."

"How can you talk such nonsense, Kathe? How can G.o.d die? Why, He is immortal, and will live through all eternity."

"Is that really true?" persisted she, as if she could hardly credit his a.s.sertion that G.o.d still lived.

"How can you doubt it? So surely as there is a G.o.d in heaven," a.s.serted 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 G.o.d, you become hopeless and discouraged as if there were none. It seemed to me you acted as if G.o.d 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 G.o.d" 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 suns.h.i.+ne, 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 s.h.i.+fting Along the path to noon, My happy brain goes drifting To dreamland on his tune.

"I love to hear the wind blow amid the blus.h.i.+ng 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 gra.s.s, 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 t.i.tle best fits Victoria, the true queen of the world, but it fits her best because she is the best type of a n.o.ble 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 a.s.sociation 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 Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, "to remark the fort.i.tude 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 s.e.x, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d can tell their bound; fas.h.i.+oned 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 G.o.d 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."