aller. your flowers as YOU «for an [ Tor P pass athe Wey a Re | zB pao Crag AS alg aes a eee : uy eyes tn) Lly ft Def. 1 1904. BOOKS BY ORISON SWETT MARDEN Pushing to the Front; or, Success Under Dificulties 12mo, with portraits, $1.50 Rising in the World; or, Architects of Fate 12mo, with portraits, $1.50 The Secret of Achievement 12mo, with portraits, $1.50 Talks with Great Workers 12mo, with portraits, $1.50 Success Booklets CHARACTER OPPORTUNITY CHEERFULNESS IRON WILL GOOD MANNERS ECONOMY 12mo, ornamental white binding Per volume, 35 cents 12mo, cloth, illustrated with portraits Per volume, 50 cents hive Re OLINE SS AS A LIFE POWER BY ORISON SWETT MARDEN Author of ** Pushing to the Front,’’ ‘The Secret of Achievement,” etc.; and Editor of ‘* Success,”” FIFTEENTH THOUSAND NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY PUBLISHERS "Copyright, 1899 ey iM adenine tid at htiiagen te ley ' i ¥ A FOREWORD. nd The soul-consuming and friction-wearing tendency of this hurrying, grasping, competing age is the excuse for this booklet. Is it not an absolute necessity to get rid of all irritants, of everything which worries and frets, and which brings discord into so many lives? Cheerfulness has a wonderful lubricating power. It lengthens the life of human machinery, as lubricants lengthen the life of inert machinery. Life’s delicate bearings should not be carelessly ground away for mere lack of oil. What is needed is a habit of cheerfulness, to enjoy every day as we go along; not to fret and stew all the week, and then expect to make up for it Sunday or on some ‘holiday. It is not a question of mirth so much as of cheerfulness ; not alone that which accompanies laughter, but serenity,— a calm, sweet soul-contentment and inward peace. Are there not multitudes of people who have the “blues,” who yet wish well to their neighbors? They would say kind words and make the world happier — but they “have n’t the time.”” To lead them to look on the sunny side of things, and to take a little time every day to speak pleasant words, is the message of the hour. THe AUTHOR. In the preparation of these pages, amid the daily demands of journalistic work, the author has been assisted by Mr. E. P. Tenney, of Cambridge. (3) Vil. WABLE- OF. CONTENTS. WHAT VANDERBILT PAID FOR TWELVE LAUGHS . THE LAUGH CURE A CHEAP MEDICINE WHY DON’T YOU LAUGH? THE CURE FOR AMERICANITIS A WORRYING WOMAN Our HAWAIIAN PARADISE . A WEATHER BREEDER ‘¢ WHAT IS AN OPTIMIST?” . ; LIVING UP THANKSGIVING AVENUE . OILING YOUR Business MACHINERY SINGING AT YOUR WoRK Goop HumMoR : ‘¢LE DIABLE EST Morr” uh TAKING YOUR FuN EveEery DAY AS YOU DO YOUR WorK UNWORKED JOY Mantes THE QUEEN OF THE WORLD FINDING WHAT YOU DO NOT SEEK. CHARLES LAMB . JOHN B. GouGH PHILLIPS BROOKS ‘¢ LOOKING PLEASANT "— A igcheee TO BE WORKED FROM THE INSIDE i Worth Five HUNDRED oer THE ‘‘Don’r Worry” SOCIETY A PLEASURE Book THE SUNSHINE-MAN. ..... .» (5) CHEERFULNESS AS A LIFE POWER. I. WHAT VANDERBILT PAID FOR TWELVE LAUGHS. Witi1am K. VANDERBILT, when he last visited Con- stantinople, one day invited Coquelin the elder, so cele- brated for his powers as a mimic, who happened to be in the city at the time, to give a private recital on board his yacht, lying in the Bosphorus. Coquelin spoke three of his monologues. A few days afterwards Coquelin received the following memorandum from the millionaire : — “ You have brought tears to our eyes and laughter to our hearts. Since all philosophers are agreed that laughing is preferable to weeping, your account with me stands thus : — ‘‘ For tears, six times . : f $600 “For laughter, twelve times . . 2,400 $3,000 ‘‘ Kindly acknowledge receipt of enclosed check.” “JT find nonsense singularly refreshing,” said Talley- rand. There is good philosophy in the saying, “ Laugh and grow fat.” If everybody knew the power of laughter as a health tonic and lfe prolonger the tinge of sadness which now clouds the American face would largely dis- (7) 8 CHEERFULNESS. appear, and many physicians would find their occupation gone. The power of laughter was given us to serve a wise purpose in our economy. It is Nature’s device for exercising the internal organs and giving us pleasure at the same time. | Laughter begins in the lungs and diaphragm, setting the liver, stomach, and other internal organs into a quick, jelly-like vibration, which gives a pleasant sensation and exercise, almost equal to that of horseback riding. During digestion, the movements of the stomach are similar to churning. Every time you take a full breath, oz when you cachinnate well, the diaphragm descends and gives the stomach an extra squeeze and shakes it. Frequent laughing sets the stomach to dancing, hurrying up the digestive process. The heart beats faster, and sends the blood bounding through the body. “There is not,” says Dr. Green, “one remotest corner or little inlet of the minute blood-vessels of the human body that does not feel some wavelet from the convulsions occasioned by a good hearty laugh.” In medical terms, it stimulates the vasomotor centers, and the spasmodic contraction of the blood-vessels causes the blood to flow quickly. Laughter accelerates the respiration, and gives warmth and glow to the whole system. It brightens the eye, increases the perspiration, expands the chest, forces the poisoned air from the least-used lung cells, and tends to restore that exquisite poise or balance which we call health, which results from the harmonious action of all the functions of the body. This delicate poise, which may be destroyed by a sleepless night, a piece of bad news, by grief or anxiety, is often wholly restored by a good hearty laugh. There is, therefore, sound sense in the caption, — CHEERFULNESS. 9 “ Cheerfulness as a Life Power,” — relating as it does to the physical life, as well as the mental and moral; and what we may call THE LAUGH CURE is based upon principles recognized as sound by the med- ical profession — so literally true is the Hebrew proverb that “a merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” ‘‘ Mirth is God’s medicine,” said Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes; “everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety, — all the rust of life,— ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth.” Elsewhere he says: “Tf you are making choice of a physician be sure you get one with a cheerful and serene countenance.” Is not a jolly physician of greater service than his pills ? Dr. Marshall Hall frequently prescribed “cheer- fulness ” for his patients, saying that it is better than anything to be obtained at the apothecary’s. In Western New York, Dr. Burdick was known as the «“ Laughing Doctor.” He always presented the happiest kind of a face; and his good humor was contagious. He dealt sparingly in drugs, yet was very successful. _ The London “ Lancet,” the most eminent medical journal in the world, gives the following scientific testi- mony to the value of jovialty :— “This power of ‘good spirits’ is a matter of high moment to the sick and weakly. To the former, it may mean the ability to survive; to the latter, the possibility of outliving, or living in spite of, a disease. It is, there- fore, of the greatest importance to cultivate the highest and most buoyant frame of mind which the conditions will admit. The same energy which takes the form of mental activity is vital to the work of the organism. 10 CHEERFULNESS. Mental influences affect the system; and a joyous spirit not only relieves pain, but increases the momentum of life in the body.” Dr. Ray, superintendent of Butler Hospital for the Insane, says in one of his reports, “ A hearty laugh is more desirable for mental health than any exercise of the reasoning faculties.” Grief, anxiety, and fear are great enemies of human life. A depressed, sour, melancholy soul, a life which has ceased to believe in its own sacredness, its own power, its own mission, a life which sinks into querulous egotism or vegetating aimlessness, has become crippled and use- less. We should fight against every influence which tends to depress the mind, as we would against a temp- tation to crime. It is undoubtedly true that, as a rule, the mind has power to lengthen the period of youthful and mature strength and beauty, preserving and renewing physical life by a stalwart mental health. I read the other day of a man in a neighboring city who was given up to die; his relatives were sent for, and they watched at his bedside. But an old acquaintance, who called to see him, assured him smilingly that he was all right and would soon be well. He talked in such a strain that the sick man was forced to laugh; and the effort so roused his system that he rallied, and he was soon well again. Was it not Shakespere who said that a light heart lives long ? The San Francisco “ Argonaut” says that a woman in Milpites, a victim of almost crushing sorrow, despond- ency, indigestion, insomnia, and kindred ills, determined to throw off the gloom which was making life so heavy a burden to her, and established a rule that she would CHEERFULNESS. ai BD | laugh at least three times a day, whether occasion was pre- sented or not; so she trained herself to laugh heartily at the least provocation, and would retire to her room and make merry by herself. She was soon in excellent health and buoyant spirits; her home became a sunny, cheerful abode. | It was said, by one who knew this woman well, and who wrote an account of the case for a popular maga- zine, that at first her husband and children were amused at her, and while they respected her determination be- cause of the griefs she bore, they did not enter into the spirit of the plan. “ But after awhile,” said this woman to me, with a smile, only yesterday, “ the funny part of the idea struck my husband, and he began to laugh every time we spoke of it. And when he came home, he would ask me if I had had my ‘ regular laughs; ’ and he would laugh when he asked the question, and again when I answered it. My children, then very young, thought ‘mamma’s notion very queer,’ but they laughed at it just the same. Gradually, my children told other children, and they told their parents. My husband spoke of it to our friends, and I rarely met one of them but he or she would laugh and ask me, ‘ How many of your laughs have you had to-day?’ Naturally, they laughed when they asked, and of course that set me laughing. When I formed this apparently strange habit I was weighed down with sorrow, and my rule simply lifted me out of it. I had suffered the most acute indigestion; for years I have not known what it is. Headaches were a daily dread; for over six years I have not had a single pain in the head. My home seems different to me, and I feel a thousand times more interest in its work. My husband is a changed man. My children are called ‘the girls 12 CHEERFULNESS. who are always laughing,’ and, altogether, my rule has proved an inspiration which has worked wonders.” The queen of fashion, however, says that we must never laugh out loud; but since the same tyrannical mistress kills. people by corsets, indulges in cosmetics, and is out all night at dancing parties, and in China pinches up the women’s feet, I place much less confidence in her views upon the laugh cure forhuman woes. Yet in all civilized countries it is a fundamental principle of refined man- ners not to be ill-timed and unreasonably noisy and boisterous in mirth. One who is wise will never violate the proprieties of well-bred people. “Yet,” says a wholesome writer upon health, “ we should do something more than to simply cultivate a cheerful, hopeful spirit, — we should cultivate a spirit of mirthfulness that is not only easily pleased and smiling, but that indulges in hearty, hilarious laughter; and if this faculty is not well marked in our organization we should cultivate it, being well assured that hearty, body- shaking laughter will do us good.” Ordinary good looks depend on one’s sense of humor, — ‘‘a merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance.” Joy- fulness keeps the heart and face young. A good laugh makes us better friends with ourselves and everybody © around us, and puts us into closer touch with what is best and brightest in our lot in life. Physiology tells the story. The great sympathetic nerves are closely allied; and when one set carries bad news to the head, the nerves reaching the stomach are affected, indigestion comes. on, and one’s countenance becomes doleful. Laugh when you can; it is CHEERFULNESS. 13 A CHEAP MEDICINE. Merriment is a philosophy not well understood. The eminent surgeon Chavasse says that we ought to begin with the babies and train children to habits of mirth : — «Encourage your child to be merry and laugh aloud; a good hearty laugh expands the chest and makes the blood bound merrily along. Commend me to a good laugh, — not to a little snickering laugh, but to one that will sound right through the house. It will not only do your child good, but will be a benefit to all who hear, and be an important means of driving the blues away from a dwelling. Merriment is very catching, and spreads in a remarkable manner, few being able to resist its contagion. A hearty laugh is delightful harmony ; indeed, it is the best of all music.” ‘Children without hilarity,” says an eminent author, “will never amount to much. ‘Trees without blossoms will never bear fruit.” Hufeland, physician to the King of Prussia, commends the ancient custom of jesters at the king’s table, whose quips and cranks would keep the company in a roar. Did not Lycurgus set up the god of laughter in the Spartan eating-halls? There is no table sauce like laughter at meals. It is the great enemy of dyspepsia. How wise are the words of the acute Chamfort, that the most completely lost of all days is the one in which we have not laughed! « A crown, for making the king laugh,” was one of the items of expense which the historian Hume found in a manuscript of King Edward II. “Tt is a good thing to laugh, at any rate,” said Dryden, the poet, “and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an in strument of happiness.” 14 CHEERFULNESS. “T live,” said Laurence Sterne, one of the greatest of English humorists, “in a constant endeavor to fence against the infirmities of ill health and other evils by mirth ; I am persuaded that, every time a man smiles, — but much more so when he laughs, — it adds something to his fragment of life.” ‘“‘Give me an honest laugher,” said Sir Walter Scott, and he was himself one of the happiest men in the world, with a kind word and pleasant smile for every one, and everybody loved him. “How much les in laughter!” exclaimed the critic Carlyle. “It is the cipher-key wherewith we decipher the whole man. Some men wear an everlasting barren. simper; in the smile of others lies the cold glitter, as of ice; the fewest are able to laugh what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and snicker from the throat outward, or at least produce some whiffing, husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool. Of none such comes good.” ‘The power to laugh, to cease work and begin to frolic and make merry in forgetfulness of all the conflict of life,” says Hein Morgan, “is a divine bestow- ment upon man.’ Happy, then, is the man, who may well tel to him- self over his good luck, who can answer the old question, ‘‘ How old are you?” by Sambo’s reply : — “Tf you reckon by the years, sah, I’se twenty-five ; but if you goes by the fun I’s ’ad, I guess I’s a hundred.” WHY-DON’T YOU LAUGH ? From the ‘‘Independent.” ‘¢ Why don’t you laugh, young man, when troubles come, Instead of sitting ’round so sour and glum? CHEERFULNESS. You cannot have all play, And sunshine every day ; When troubles come, I say, why don’t you laugh? “‘ Why don’t you laugh? ’T will ever help to soothe The aches and pains. No road in life is smooth; There ’s many an unseen bump, And many a hidden stump O’er which you’ll have to jump. Why don’t you laugh? ‘¢ Why don’t you laugh? Don’t let your spirits wilt; Don’t sit and cry because the milk you’ve spilt; If you would mend it now, Pray let me tell you how: Just milk another cow! Why don’t you laugh? ‘¢ Why don’t you laugh, and make us all laugh, too, And keep us mortals all from getting blue? A laugh will always win; If you can’t laugh, just grin, — Come on, let’s all join in! Why don’t you laugh? 15 16 CHEERFULNESS. Il. — THE CURE FOR AMERICANITIS. Prince Wolkonsky, during a visit to this country, de- clared that “ Business is the alpha and omega of Ameri- can life. There is no pleasure, no joy, no satisfaction. There is no standard except that of profit. There is no other country where they speak of a man as worth so many dollars. In other countries they live to enjoy life; here they exist for business.” A Boston merchant cor- roborated this statement by saying he was anxious all day about making money, and worried all night for fear he should lose what he had made. “Jn the United States,’’ a distinguished traveler once said, “there is everywhere comfort, but no joy. The ambition of getting more and fretting over what is lost absorb life.” «Every man we meet looks as if he’d gone out to borrow trouble, with plenty of it on hand,” said a French lady, upon arriving in New York. “The Americans are the best-fed, the best-clad, and the best-housed people in the world,” says another wit- ness, “but they are the most anxious; they hug pos- sible calamity to their breasts.” “ T question if care and doubt ever wrote their names so legibly on the faces of any other population,” says Emerson; “old age begins in the nursery.” How quickly we Americans exhaust life! With what panting haste we pursue everything! Every man you meet seems to be late for an appointment. Hurry is stamped in the wrinkles of the national face. We are CHEERFULNESS. 17 men of action; we go faster and faster as the years go by, speeding our machinery to the utmost. Bent forms, prematurely gray hair, restlessness and discontent, are characteristic of our age and people. We earn our bread, but cannot digest it; and our over-stimulated nerves soon become irritated, and touchiness follows, — so fatal to a business man, and so annoying in society. ‘“‘It is not work that kills men,” says Beecher; “ it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more on - aman than he can bear. But worry is rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, but friction.” | It is not so much the great sorrows, the great burdens, the great hardships, the great calamities, that cloud over the sunshine of life, as the little petty vexations, insig- nificant anxieties and fear, the little daily dyings, which render our lives unhappy, and destroy our mental elas- ticity, without advancing our life-work one inch. «“ Anxiety never yet bridged any chasm.” “What,” asks Dr. George W. Jacoby, in an ‘ Evening Post” interview, “is the ultimate physical effect of worry ? Why, the same as that of a fatal bullet-wound or sword-thrust. Worry kills as surely, though not so quickly, as ever gun or dagger did, and more people have died in the last century from sheer worry than have been killed in battle.” Dr. Jacoby is one of the foremost of American brain doctors. “The investigations of the neurologists,” he says, ‘‘ have laid bare no secret of Nature in recent years more startling and interesting than the discovery that worry kills.” This is the final, up-to-date word. <“ Not only is it known,” resumes the great neurologist, count- ing off his words, as it were, on his finger-tips, ‘“ that 18 CHEERFULNESS. worry kills, but the most minute details of its murderous methods are familiar to modern scientists. It is a common belief of those who have made a special study of the science of brain diseases that hundreds of deaths attrib- uted to other causes each year are due simply to worry. In plain, untechnical language, worry works its irrepar- able injury through certain cells of the brain life. The insidious inroads upon the system can ‘be best likened to the constant falling of drops of water in one spot. In the brain it is the insistent, never-lost idea, the single, constant thought, centered upon one subject, which in the course of time destroys the brain cells. The healthy brain can cope with occasional worry; it is the iteration and reiteration of disquieting thoughts which the cells of the brain cannot successfully combat. ‘“‘The mechanical effect of worry is much the same as if the skull were laid bare and the brain exposed to the action of a little hammer beating continually upon it day after day, until the membranes are disintegrated and the normal functions disabled. The maddening thought that will not be downed, the haunting, ever-present idea that is not or cannot be banished by a supreme effort of the will, is the theoretical hammer which diminishes the vitality of the sensitive nerve organisms, the minuteness of which makes them visible to the eye only under a powerful microscope. The ‘worry,’ the thought, the single idea grows upon one as time goes on, until the worry victim cannot throw it off. Through this, one set or area of cells is affected. The cells are intimately con- nected, joined together by little fibres, and they in turn are in close relationship with the cells of the other parts of the brain. «“ Worry is itself a species of monomania. No mental CHEERFULNESS. 19 attitude is more disastrous to personal achievement, personal happiness, and personal usefulness in the world, than worry and its twin brother, despondency. The remedy for the evil lies in training the will to cast off cares and seek a change of occupation, when the first warning is sounded by Nature in intellectual lassitude. Relaxation is the certain foe of worry, and ‘ don’t fret’ one of the healthiest of maxims.’ In a life of constant worrying, we are as much behind the times as if we were to go back to use the first steam engines that wasted ninety per cent. of the energy of the coal, instead of having an electric dynamo that utilizes ninety per cent. of the power. Some people waste a large percentage of their energy in fretting and stewing, in useless anxiety, in scolding, in complaining about the weather and the perversity of inanimate things. Others convert nearly all of their energy into power and moral sunshine. He who has learned the true art of living will not waste his energies in friction, which accomplishes nothing, but merely grinds out the machinery of life. It must be relegated to the debating societies to determine which is the worse — A Nervous Man or A WORRYING WOMAN. “1 ’m awfully worried this morning,” said one woman. “Whatisit?” ‘Why, I thought of something to worry about last night, and now I can’t remember it.” A famous actress once said: “ Worry is the foe of all beauty.” She might have added: “It is the foe to all health.” “Tt seems so heartless in me, if I do not worry about my children,” said one mother. Women nurse their troubles, as they do their babies. 20 CHEERFULNESS. ‘Troubles grow larger,’ said Lady Holland, “by nursing.” The White Knight who carried about a mousetrap, lest he be troubled with mice upon his journeys, was not unlike those who anticipate their burdens. “He grieves,” says Seneca, “more than is necessary, who grieves before it is necessary.” “My children,” said a dying man, “during my long life I have had a great many troubles, most. of which never happened.” A prominent business man in Phila- delphia said that his father worried for twenty-five years over an anticipated misfortune which never arrived. We try to grasp too much of life at once; since we think of it as a whole, instead of living one day at a time. Life is a mosaic, and each tiny piece must be cut and set with skill, first one piece, then another. A clock would be of no use as a time-keeper if it should become discouraged and come to a standstill by calculating its work a year ahead, as the clock did in Jane Taylor’s fable. It is not the troubles of to-day, but those of to-morrow and next week and next year, that whiten our heads, wrinkle our faces, and bring us to a standstill. “There is such a thing,” said Uncle Eben, “as too much foresight. People get to figuring what might hap- pen year after next, and let the fire go out and catch their death of cold, right where they are.” Nervous prostration is seldom the result cf present trouble or work, but of work and trouble anticipated. Mental exhaustion comes to those who look ahead, and climb mountains before reaching them. Resolutely build a wall about to-day, and live within the inclosure. The past nay have been hard, sad, or wrong, — but it is over. CHEERFULNESS. 2b Why not take a turn about? Instead of worrying over unforeseen misfortune, set out with all your soul to rejoice in the unforeseen blessings of all your coming days. “I find the gayest castles in the air that were ever piled,” says Emerson, “far better for comfort and for use than the dungeons in the air that are daily dug and caverned out by grumbling, discontented people.” What is this world but as you take it? Thackeray calls the world a looking-glass that gives back the reflec- tion of one’s own face. “Frown at it, and it will look sourly upon you; laugh at it, and it is a jolly com- panion.” “ There is no use in talking,” said a woman. “ Every time I move, I vow I’l] never move again. Such neigh- bors as I get in with! Seems as though they grow worse and worse.” ‘Indeed ?” replied her caller; “ per- haps you take the worst neighbor with you when you move.” ‘In the sudden thunder-storm of Independence Day,” Says a news correspondent, “we were struck by the con- trast between two women, each of whom had had some trying experience with the weather. One came through the rain and hail to take refuge at the railway station, under the swaying and uncertain shelter of an escorting man’s umbrella. Her skirts were soaked to the knees, her pink ribbons were limp, the purple of the flowers on her hat ran in streaks down the white silk. And yet, though she was a poor girl and her holiday finery must have been relatively costly, she made the best of it with a smile and cheerful words. The other was well sheltered; but she took the disappointment of her hopes and the pos- sibility of a little spattering from a leaky window with frowns and fault-finding.” Dy CHEERFULNESS. ‘‘ Cries little Miss Fret, In a very great pet: ‘JT hate this warm weather; it’s horrid to tan! It scorches my nose, And it blisters my toes, And wherever I go I must carry a fan.’ ** Chirps little Miss Laugh: ‘Why, I could n’t tell half The fun I am having this bright summer day! I sing through the hours, I cull pretty flowers, And ride like a queen on the avant gute hay.’” Happily a new era has of late opened for our worried housekeepers, who spend their time in “ the half-frantic dusting of corners, spasmodic sweeping, impatient snatch- ing or pushing aside obstacles in the room, hurrying and skurrying upstairs and down cellar.” “It is not,” says Prentice Mulford, “the work that exhausts them, —it is the mental condition they are in that makes so many old and haggard at forty.” All that is needful now to ease up their burdens is to go to OUR HAWAIIAN PARADISE. A newspaper correspondent, Annie Laurie, has told us all about the new kind of American girls just added to our country : — ‘‘ They are as straight as an arrow, and walk as queens walk in fairy stories; they have great braids of sleek, black hair, soft brown eyes, and gleaming white teeth ; they can swim and ride and sing; and they are brown with a skin that shines like bronze. . . . There isn’t a worried woman in Hawaii. The women there can’t worry. They don’t know how. They eat and sing and CHEERFULNESS. 23 laugh, and see the sun and the moon set, and possess their souls in smiling peace. “Tf a Hawaii woman has a good dinner, she laughs and invites her friends to eat it with her; if she has n’t a good dinner, she laughs and goes to sleep, — and forgets to be hungry. She doesn’t have to worry about what the people in the downstairs flat will think if they don’t see the butcher’s boy arrive on time. If she can earn the money, she buys a nice, new, glorified Mother Hub- bard; and, if she can’t get it, she throws the old one into the surf and washes it out, puts a new wreath of fresh flowers in her hair, and starts out to enjoy the morning and the breezes thereof. «They are not earnest workers; they haven’t the slightest idea that they were put upon earth to reform the universe, —they’re just happy. They run across great stretches of clear, white sand, washed with resplen- dent purple waves, and, when the little brown babies roll in the surf, their brown mothers run after them, laugh- ing and splashing like a lot of children. Or, perhaps we see them in gay cavalcades mounted upon garlanded ponies, adorned by white jasmine wreaths with roses and pinks. -And here in this paradise of laughter and light hearts and gentle music, there ’s absolutely nothing to do but to care for the children and old people and to swim orride. You couldn’t start a‘reform circle’ to save your life; there is n’t a jail in the place, nor a ten- ement quarter, and there are no outdoor poor. There isn’t a woman’s club in Honolulu, —notaclub. There was a culture circle once for a few days; a Boston woman who went there for her health organized it, but it in- terfered with afternoon nap-time, so nobody came.” When, hereafter, we talk about worrying women, we 24 CHEERFULNESS. must take into account our Hawaiian sisters, if we will average up the amount of worry per capita in our nation. A WEATHER BREEDER. It is probably quite within bounds to say that one out of three of our American farming population, women and men, never enjoy a beautiful day without first reminding you that “It is one of those infernal weather breeders.” Habitual fretters see more trouble than others. They are never so well as their neighbors. The weather never suits them. The climate is trying. The winds are too high or too low; it is too hot or too cold, too damp or too dry. The roads are either muddy or dusty. “IT met Mr. N. one wet morning,” says Dr. John Todd; “and, bound as I was to make the best of it, I ventured: “