Chapter 1: In the Cheering-Up Business

When Miss Edith Wyatt was at Bryn Mawr College, she was known as "the girl in the cheering-up business." Homesick girls, discouraged girls, girls who were behind in their studies, weary students went to her for a bit of brightness and encouragement, and always found it. She radiated mental sunshine from every pore.

There is a great opening in the cheering-up business, plenty of room for everybody, and it does not interfere with any other calling. One may do more good in it than in one's regular vocation.

Somehow these people have the power of unlocking the faculties, loosening the tongue, to make us speak with the gift of prophecy. These sunshine characters are health promoters. They are the unpaid boards of health who look after the public welfare.

The faculty of humor was given us to be developed as much as the faculty for earning a living. The universality of fun-loving shows its importance. It is as much our duty to develop the mirth-loving faculty as the mathematical faculty or language. There is every evidence that the fun-loving faculty was intended to be the strongest in human nature instead of the weakest. It ought to be developed and stimulated. It is the great medicine of the mind — the great uplifter and lubricator.

It is wonderful how the cultivation of the habit of enjoying things will transform the whole life, so that we see everything in a different light. This does not suggest frivolity or flippancy; it is the normal, natural development of humor, as it was exemplified in Beecher and in Phillips Brooks. Great healthy natures are always fun-loving.

It is positively sinful to suppress the mirthful tendencies in the young people — bubbling over, joyous and happy, exulting in mere existence. A serious and sober face on a child should be unthinkable. It is incompatible with God's plan. What has care and anxiety to do with young life? Care and anxiety and worry in a young face show that somebody is at fault.

"Laugh until I come back" was Father Taylor's good-bye to his friend Dr. Bartol. Yet many people have ruined their power of laughter. They have no rebound, no elasticity. To them the sense of humor is a weakness, frivolous and inconsistent with the dead-in-earnest, sober life. Life is a thing to be taken seriously, they say. These people feel the weight of the woes of the world. They are loaded down with this responsibility. They cannot understand how anybody can take such a light, flippant view of life as to spend time in fun-making. These people give us the impression that the whole universe would stop were it not for them. They go around with a serious aggrieved air with the world resting upon their shoulders.

Joyous people are not only the happiest, but the longest lived, the most useful and the most successful. This little strain of humor, the love of fun in human nature, is a normal, natural lubricant which oils life's machinery, makes it run smoothly, and relieves that jar and grinding of the bearings which prematurely wear away so many lives.

Lydia Maria Child used to say: "I think cheerfulness in every possible way. I hang prisms in my window to fill the room with rainbows." This is the right kind of philosophy, the great medicine of the mind, the best tonic for the body.

The habit of looking on the sunny side, the laughter-side or ludicrous side of things, is a fortune in itself. I would rather be a millionaire of cheerfulness and sunshine than of dollars.

No matter what your work may be, learn to find happiness everywhere. The love of cheerfulness can be cultivated like any other faculty — and in practical life it will be worth more to you than a college education without it. This is wealth that all can accumulate — the wealth of joy. No matter how hard your lot, how dark the day may seem, if you work a little good humor into it, it will lift your life above a humdrum existence. If you manage to get in a good laugh during the day, your work will not seem nearly as hard. It will relieve the grind and dreariness. A dull, serious mood all day will not only make you very uninteresting to others, but it makes your own load go hard. A good laugh does away with cares, worries, doubts, and relieves the great strain of modern life. If there is anyone who bores us it is the man who has no fun in him, can never see a joke, who has no such sense of the ludicrous as to find something to excite laughter every hour of every day.

"Better a mind too small than one too serious." Give us the joy which is independent of circumstances, and which lifts us above even an iron environment.

“Smile once in a while,

'T will make your heart seem lighter.

Life 's a mirror: if we smile,

Smiles come back to greet us;

If we’re frowning all the while

Frowns forever meet us."

"You are on the shady side of seventy, I expect," someone said to an old gentleman. "No, I am on the sunny side of it."

In a country store in Connecticut men were discussing the question of how they would like to die. After the various preferences had been given, a man by the name of Zack was asked to give his preference. "Wal, I tell you, boys," he said, "I'd rather see something that would jest tickle me to death, and die a-laughin'."

An editor of a great daily was asked why he did not care for the services of a man past fifty. "It is not because he cannot do the work, but he takes himself too seriously."

In ancient Germany there was a law against joking. "It makes my men forget war," said the king. One would think that there was a law against laughter in our great cities, as he goes through the streets and sees among thousands scarcely a bright, cheerful face radiating sunshine. What a sad thing it is to go into the slums and see sad, sober, anxious looks upon the faces of many children, who ought to be all sunshine, radiating gladness. Joy has been crushed out of their little lives. Many of them never know what a glad childhood means.

One would think there had been an edict against laughter as he studies the faces of business and professional men in our cities. Even in restaurants or at lunch counters, men cannot forget the serious side of life. They eat with long faces. They are thinking, thinking, worrying, worrying, planning, planning. The almighty dollar is a serious subject, forbidding laughter during business hours.

Yet the pessimist repels trade and new business. The cheerful man attracts it. There is a great drawing power in optimism.

The hopeful man sees success where others see failure, sunshine where others see shadows and storm.

If the child were only brought up with the idea that the principal thing in life is to be cheerful under all circumstances it would soon revolutionize our civilization.

A great many people never learn to laugh heartily. A sort of a half-smile is as far as they ever get. If children get a little boisterous, they are hushed. Their little lives are suppressed in sad, serious homes until they almost lose the power of spontaneous laughter.

Dr, Johnson says: "A man should spend part of his time with the laughers." One of the redeeming features of the light plays and vaudeville performances is that people, temporarily at least, forget the serious side of life and learn to laugh.

How glad we all are to welcome a sunny soul. We are never too busy to see them. There is nothing we welcome so much as sunshine. It is a priceless gift to be able to possess a calm, serene, sweet soul which soothes, enriches, which is a perpetual balm to the hurts of the world. These souls reassure us. We seem to touch power and sympathy when they are with us, and we love to go near them when in trouble. They breathe a medicinal balm that soothes the wounds and hurts of the heart.

There is one success possible to the humblest man and the poorest woman; and that is, to go through life with a smiling face and to scatter the flowers of kindness on every hand. The habit of feeling kindly towards everybody, of carrying about a helpful manner, an expression of love, of kindness in one's very face, and a desire to help and cheer, is worth a fortune to a young man or young woman trying to get on. The wearer of smiles and the bearer of a kindly disposition needs no introduction, but is welcome everywhere.

There is nothing wanted so much in the world as sunshine, and the greatest wealth is a cheerful, helpful disposition. This is riches which not only blesses the possessor, but everybody he comes in contact with partakes of his wealth.

Everybody is rich who knows or comes in contact with the millionaire of good cheer, and the more he gives of his wealth, the more it multiplies. It is like the seed put into the soil — the more one sows, the greater the harvest.

“Do not look on life through a smoked glass."