Splendidly blest is that household that is so fortunate as to possess at least one member gifted with the grace of good humor. One such person in a home is enough if there cannot be more. Just when all the others are seriously confronting what seems to be a most sad and serious condition of affairs how just one word of illuminating good humor can change the whole point of view and send the foreboding proposition glimmering into nothingness. "Do you know, my dear," says Mrs. Holden, "that there is absolutely nothing that will help you to bear the ills of life so well as a good laugh? Laugh all you can and the small imps in blue who love to preempt their quarters in a human heart will scatter away like owls before the music of flutes.
There are few of the minor difficulties and annoyances that will not dissipate at the charge of the nonsense brigade. If the clothes line breaks, if the cat tips over the milk and the dog elopes with the roast, if the children fall into the mud simultaneously with the advent of clean aprons, if the new girl quits in the middle of housecleaning, and though you search the earth with candles you find none to take her place, if the neighbor you have trusted goes back on you and decides to keep chickens, if the chariot wheels of the uninvited guest draw near when you are out of provender, and the gaping of your empty purse is like the unfilled mouth of a young robin, take courage if you have enough sunshine in your heart, to keep the laugh on your lips. Before good nature, half the cares of daily living will fly away like midges before the wind. Try it."
What a world of inspiration and cheerfulness in the motto written by Edward Everett Hale for the Lend-A-Hand Society: "Look up, and not down; look forward, and not back; look out, and not in; and lend a hand." It is the lifting of the burden from another's tired shoulder that does most to lighten the load resting on our own.
No one who truly is conscious of the value of sunshine upon his own nature and upon the spirits of those with whom he comes into contact will ever, for one minute, permit himself to be taken possession of by
"Blues" are the sorry calms that come To make our spirits mope, And steal the breeze of promise from The shining sails of hope.