Cheerfulness as a Life Power Part 8

"Nothing will supply the want of suns.h.i.+ne to peaches," said Emerson, "and to make knowledge valuable you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom."

"Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness," said Carlyle; "altogether past calculation its powers of endurance. Efforts to be permanently useful must be uniformly joyous,--a spirit all suns.h.i.+ne, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright."

"The cheerful man carries with him perpetually, in his presence and personality, an influence that acts upon others as summer warmth on the fields and forests. It wakes up and calls out the best that is in them.

It makes them stronger, braver, and happier. Such a man makes a little spot of this world a lighter, brighter, warmer place for other people to live in. To meet him in the morning is to get inspiration which makes all the day's struggles and tasks easier. His hearty handshake puts a thrill of new vigor into your veins. After talking with him for a few minutes, you feel an exhilaration of spirits, a quickening of energy, a renewal of zest and interest in living, and are ready for any duty or service."

"Great hearts there are among men," says Hillis, of Plymouth pulpit; "they carry a volume of manhood; their presence is suns.h.i.+ne; their coming changes our climate; they oil the bearings of life; their shadow always falls behind them; they make right living easy. Blessed are the happiness-makers: they represent the best forces in civilization!"

If refined manners reprove us a little for ill-timed laughter, a smiling face kindled by a smiling heart is always in order. Who can ever forget Emerson's smile? It was a perpetual benediction upon all who knew him. A smile is said to be to the human countenance what suns.h.i.+ne is to the landscape. Or a smile is called the rainbow of the face.

"This is a dark world to many people," says a suggestive modern writer, "a world of chills, a world of fogs, a world of wet blankets.

Nine-tenths of the men we meet need encouragement. Your work is so urgent that you have no time to stop and speak to the people, but every day you meet scores, perhaps hundreds and thousands of persons, upon whom you might have direct and immediate influence. 'How? How?' you cry out. We answer: By the grace of physiognomy. There is nothing more catching than a face with a lantern behind it, s.h.i.+ning clear through. We have no admiration for a face with a dry smile, meaning no more than the grin of a false face. But a smile written by the hand of G.o.d, as an index finger or table of contents, to whole volumes of good feeling within, is a benediction. You say: 'My face is hard and lacking in mobility, and my benignant feelings are not observable in the facial proportions.' We do not believe you. Freshness and geniality of the soul are so subtle and pervading that they will, at some eye or mouth corner, leak out. Set behind your face a feeling of grat.i.tude to G.o.d and kindliness toward man, and you will every day preach a sermon long as the streets you walk, a sermon with as many heads as the number of people you meet, and differing from other sermons in the fact that the longer it is the better. The reason that there are so many sour faces, so many frowning faces, so many dull faces, is because men consent to be acrid and petulant, and stupid. The way to improve your face is to improve your disposition. Attractiveness of physiognomy does not depend on regularity of features. We know persons whose brows are s.h.a.ggy, eyes oblique, noses ominously longitudinal, and mouths straggling along in unusual and unexpected directions; and yet they are men and women of so much soul that we love to look upon them, and their faces are sweet evangels."

It was N. P. Willis, I think, who added to the beat.i.tudes--"Blessed are the joy-makers." "And this is why all the world loves little children, who are always ready to have 'a suns.h.i.+ne party,'--little children bubbling over with fun, as a bobolink with song.

"How well we remember it all!--the long gone years of our own childhood, and the households of joyous children we have known in later years.

Joy-makers are the children still,--some of them in unending scenes of light. I saw but yesterday this epitaph at Mount Auburn,--'She was so pleasant': sunny-hearted in life, and now alive forever more in light supernal.

"How can we then but rejoice with joy unspeakable, as the children of immortality; living habitually above the gloom and damps of earth, and leading lives of ministration; bestowing everywhere sweetness and light,--radiating upon the earth something of the beauty of the unseen world."

What is a sunny temper but "a talisman more powerful than wealth, more precious than rubies"? What is it but "an aroma whose fragrance fills the air with the odors of Paradise"?

"I am so full of happiness," said a little child, "that I could not be any happier unless I could grow." And she bade "Good morning" to her sweet singing bird, and "Good morning" to the sun; then she asked her mother's permission, and softly, reverently, gladly bade "Good morning to G.o.d,"--and why should she not?

Was it not Goethe who represented a journey that followed the suns.h.i.+ne round the world, forever bathed in light? And Longfellow sang:

"'T is always morning somewhere; and above The awakening continents, from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, Somewhere the birds are singing evermore."

"The darkness past, we mount the radiant skies, And changeless day is ours; we hear the songs Of higher spheres, the light divine our eyes Behold and sunlight robes of countless throngs Who dwell in light; we seek, with joyous quest, G.o.d's service sweet to wipe all tears away, And list we every hour, with eager zest, For high command to toils that G.o.d has blest: So fill we full our endless suns.h.i.+ne day."