Cheerfulness as a Life Power | Page 4

in a manuscript of King Edward II.
"It is a good thing to laugh, at any rate," said Dryden, the poet, "and if a straw can tickle a
man, it is an instrument of happiness."
"I 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 lies 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 Campbell Morgan, "is a divine bestowment upon man."
Happy, then, is the man, who may well laugh to himself over his good luck, who can
answer the old question, "How old are you?" by Sambo's reply:--
"If 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? 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?"

II. THE CURE FOR AMERICANITIS.
Prince Wolkonsky, during a visit to this country, declared that "Business is the alpha and
omega of American 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 corroborated 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.
"In 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 witness, "but they are the most anxious; they hug possible calamity to their
breasts."

"I 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 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 a man 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