Good Cheer
Ur disposition is much of our own
making. We admit there is great
difference in natural constitutions.
Some persons are born cross. See that man
with a long face that never shortens into a
laugh! Tell me, did not his mother have
trouble with him when he was small? Why,
he never was pleased. Did he not make riots
in the nursery among looking-glasses and glass
pitchers? Was his nurse ever able on her
knee to jolt down his petulance, or shake up
his good - humor? Did he not often hold an
indignation meeting flat on the floor — his
hands, his head, and his feet all participating
in the exercises? Could not his father tell you
a story of twelve o’clock at night, with hasty toilet, walking the floor with the dear little blessing in his arms? A story that would be a caution to old bachelors.
Some are from infancy light and happy — they romp, they fly. You can hear their swift feet in the hall. Their loud laugfhter rines through the house, or in the woods bursts into a score of echoes. At night you can hardly hush their glad hearts for slumber, and in the morning they wake you with their singing. Alas! if then they leave you, and you no more hear their swift feet in the hall, and their loud laughter ringing through the house, or in the woods bursting into a score of echoes; if they wake you no more in the morning with their sweet song; if the color go out of the rose and its leaves fall; if angels for once grow jealous, and want what you cannot spare; if packed away in the trunk or drawer there be silent garments that once fluttered with youthful life, and by mistake you call some other child by the name of the one departed — ah me! ah me!
But while we may all from our childhood have a certain bent given to our disposition, much depends upon ourselves whedier we will be happy or miserable.
You will see In die world chiefly diat for which you look. A farmer going through the country chiefly examines the farms, an architect the buildings, a merchant the condition of the markets, a minister the churches; and so a man going through. the world will see the most of that for which he especially looks. He who Is constantly watching for troubles will find them stretching off Into gloomy wildernesses, while he who Is watchlnof for blessinors will find them hither and thither extending in harvests of luxuriance.
Like most garments, like most carpets, everything In life has a right side and a wrong side. You can take any joy, and by turning It around, find troubles on the other side; or you may take the greatest trouble, and by turning it around, find joys on the other side. The gloomiest mountain never casts a shadow on both sides at once, nor does the greatest of life’s calamities. The earth in its revolutions manaores about rio-ht — it never has darkness
o o
all over at the same time. Sometimes it has night In America, and sometimes In China, but there Is some part of the earth constantly In the bright sunHght. My friends, do as the earth does. When you have trouble, keep turning round, and you will find sunlight somewhere. Amid the thickest eloom throuo-h which you are called to pass, carry your own candle. A consummate fret will. In almost every Instance, come to nothing. You will not go to such a merchant’s store, nor employ such a mechanic, nor call such a minister.
Fretfulness will kill anything that Is not In its nature Immortal. There is a large class of persons In constant trouble about their health, although the same amount of strength in a cheerful man would be taken as healthiness. Their digestion, being constantly suspected of unfaithfulness, finally refuses to serve such a master, and says, “Hereafter make way with your own lobsters!” and the suspected lungs resign their office, saying: “Hereafter, blow your own bellows!” For the last twenty years he has been expecting every moment to faint. His nerves make Insurrection, and rise up against his head, saying: “Come! let us seize upon this armory!” His face is perpetually drawn, as though he either had a pain or expected one.
You fear to accost him with, “How are you to-day?” for that would be the signal for a shower of complaints. He is always getting a lump on his side, an enlargement of the heart, or a curve in the spine. If some of these disorders did not actually come, he would be sick of disappointment. If you should find his memorandum - book, you would discover in it recipes, in elderly female handwriting, for the cure of all styles of diseases, from softening of the brain in a man, down to the bots in a horse. His bedroom -shelf is an apothecary -infantum, where medicines of all kinds may be found, from larcre bottles full of head- wash for diseased craniums, down to the smallest vial, full of the best preparations for the removing of corns from the feet. Thousands of men are being destroyed by this constant suspicion of their health.
Others settle down into a gloomy state from forebodings of trouble to come. They do not know why it is, but they are always expecting that something will happen. They imagine about one presentiment a week. A bird flies into the window, or a salt-cellar upsets on the table, or a cricket chirps on the hearth, and they shiver all over, and expect a messenger speedily to come in hot haste to the front door, and rush in with evil tidings.
Away! away with all forebodings as to the future. Cheer up, disconsolate ones! Go forth among nature. Look up toward the heavens insufferably bright by day, or at night when the sky is merry with ten thousand stars, joining hands of light, with the earth in the ring, going round and round with gleam, and dance, and song, making old Night feel young again. Go to the forest, where the woodman’s axe rines on the trees, and the solitude is broken by the call of the woodsparrow, and the chewink starting up from among the huckleberry-bushes. Go to where the streams leap down off the rocks, and their crystal heels clatter over the white pebbles. Go to where the wild flowers stand drinking out of the mountain - brook, and, scattered on the grass, look as if all the oreads had cast their crowns at the foot of the steep. Hark to the fluting of the winds and the long -metre psalm of the thunder! Look at the Morning coming down the mountains, and Evening drawing aside the curtain from heaven’s wall of jasper, amethyst, sardonyx, and chalcedony! Look at all this, and then be happy.