An ounce of cheerfulness is worth a pound of sadness.--Fuller
The habit of looking at the bright side of things is better than an income of a thousand a year.--Hume.
We all love the company of cheerful people, but we do not think, as much as we ought to, of the nature of cheerfulness itself. Because we find that some people are naturally cheerful, we are apt to forget that cheerfulness is a habit which can be cultivated by all. Whether we do or do not possess a cheerful disposition, depends very largely upon our own efforts; for if we will endeavor, while still in our early years, to form the habit of looking on the bright side of things, and then persist in this course as we grow older, we shall certainly attain to that habitual cheerfulness which makes the lives of those we admire so sunny and so pleasing.
Even the smallest matters may aid us in forming this habit. Perhaps you have heard of the little girl who noticed, while eating her dinner, that the golden rays of the sun fell upon her spoon. She put the spoon to her mouth, and then exclaimed, "O mother! I have swallowed a whole spoonful of sunshine." Some children even take a cheerful view of their punishments, as seen in the following incident. "Little Charley had been very naughty, and was imprisoned for an hour in the kitchen wood-box. He speedily began amusing himself with chips and splinters, and was playing quite busily and happily, when a neighbor entered the house by way of the kitchen. "Charley," he cried, "what are you doing there?" "Nothing,"
said Charley, "nothing; but mamma"s just been having one of her bad spells.""
Cheerfulness consists in that happy frame of mind which is best described as the shutting out of all that pertains to the morbid, the gloomy, the fretful, and the discontented. The perfection of cheerfulness is displayed in general good temper united to much kindliness of heart. It arises partly from personal goodness, and partly from belief in the goodness of others. Its face is ever directed toward happiness. It sees "the glory in the gra.s.s, the sunshine on the flower."
It encourages happy thoughts, and lives in an atmosphere of peace. It costs nothing, and yet is invaluable; for it blesses its possessor, and affords a large measure of enjoyment to others.
Cheerfulness bears the same friendly regard to the mind as to the body.
It banishes all anxious care and discontent, soothes and composes the pa.s.sions, and keeps the soul in a perpetual calm. Try for a single day to keep yourself in an easy and cheerful frame of mind; and then compare the day with one which has been marred by discontent, and you will find your heart open to every good motive, and your life so greatly strengthened, that you will wonder at your own improvement, and will feel that you are more than repaid for the effort.
Goethe once said, "Give me the man who bears a heavy load lightly, and looks on a grave matter with a blithe and cheerful eye." And Carlyle has pointed out that "One is scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches to music. The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their spheres. Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness; altogether past calculation its power of endurance. Efforts, to be permanently useful, must be uniformly joyous--a spirit all sunshine, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright."
This spirit of cheerfulness should be encouraged in our youth if we would wish to have the benefit of it in our old age. Persons who are always innocently cheerful and good-humored are very useful in the world; they maintain peace and happiness, and spread a thankful temper among all who live around them.
"A little word in kindness spoken A motion or a tear, Has often healed a heart that"s broken, And made a friend sincere."
Cheerfulness does not depend upon the measure of our possessions. There is a Persian story to the effect that the great king, being out of spirits, consulted his astrologers, and was told that happiness could be found by wearing the shirt of a perfectly happy man. The court, and the homes of all the prosperous cla.s.ses were searched in vain; no such man could be found. At last a common laborer was found to fulfill the conditions; he was absolutely happy; but, alas! the remedy was as far off as ever, for the man had no shirt.
The same truth may be ill.u.s.trated by a reference to the life and character of the Roman emperor, Nero. Few persons ever had greater means and opportunities for self-gratification. From the senator to the slave, everybody in the empire crouched in servile subjection before his throne. Enormous revenues from the provinces were poured into his coffers, and no one dared criticise his manner of spending them. He was absolute monarch, holding the destinies of millions at his will. He came to the throne at seventeen; and during the fifteen years of his reign he exhausted every known means of pa.s.sionate indulgence. He left nothing untried or untouched that could stimulate the palate, or arouse his pa.s.sions, or administer in any way to his pleasure. After the great fire in Rome, he built his golden palace, and said, "Now at last I am lodged like a man"; but alas! his search for happiness was in vain. During his later years he never knew a really cheerful day; and, at last, he was forced to flee before his outraged people, and took refuge in a miserable hut, trembling like a base coward, where, at his own request, a slave did him the favor to end his miserable life.
In one of his famous essays, Addison says, "I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of the mind. Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity."
Cheerfulness and good spirits depend in a great degree upon bodily causes; but much may be done for the promotion of this frame of mind.
"Persons subject to low spirits should make the room in which they live as cheerful as possible; hanging up pictures or prints, and filling the odd nooks and corners with beautiful ornaments. A bay window looking upon pleasant objects, and, above all, a large fire whenever the weather will permit, are favorable to good spirits, and the tables near should be strewed with books and pamphlets." "To this," says Sydney Smith, "must be added as much eating and drinking as is consistent with health; and some manual employment for men--as gardening, a carpenter"s shop, or a turning-lathe. Women have always manual employment enough, and it is a great source of cheerfulness." For children, fresh air, occupation, and outdoor sports are great helps in overcoming depression and gloom.
SYDNEY SMITH.
There are a few n.o.ble natures whose very presence carries sunshine with them wherever they go; a sunshine which means pity for the poor, sympathy for the suffering, help for the unfortunate, and kindness toward all. It is the sunshine, and not the cloud, that colors the flower. There is more virtue in one sunbeam than in a whole hemisphere of cloud and gloom.
A man of this stamp is found in Sydney Smith, an English clergyman and writer of great distinction, who was born in 1771, and died in 1845. His was a sunny temperament. Noted for his wit, he was equally famous for his kindness. He hated injustice; he praised virtue; he pierced humbugs; he laughed away trouble; he preached and lived the gospel of Christian cheerfulness.
Smith helped to found the _Edinburgh Review_, and he advocated putting on the t.i.tle-page this truthful, too truthful, sentence: "We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal." Poor but happy, this jest is characteristic of the man. His name became known: his society was sought. Macaulay and he were called "the great talkers." He moved to London, and gave lectures on moral philosophy that drew crowds, so that the carriages of fashion blocked the streets. He was the charm of every circle. His pen was always on the side of progress and good fellowship.
At every turn in life he made light of vexations, and never allowed himself or those with him to indulge in morbid ideas, imaginative forebodings, or resentment. This is what he wrote to his daughter: "I am not situated as I should choose; but I am resolved to like it, and to reconcile myself to it; which is more manly than to feign myself above it and send up complaints of being thrown away." One of his favorite expressions was, "Let us glorify the room"; which meant, throw up the shades and let in the sunshine.
The following anecdote will help to show his bright and sparkling disposition: At dinner with a large party of famous men and women, a French scientist annoyed all the rest by loudly arguing for atheism, and proclaimed his belief that there is no G.o.d. "Very good soup this,"
struck in Sydney Smith. "Yes, monsieur, it is excellent," replied the atheist. "Pray, sir," continued Smith, "do you believe in a cook?" The ounce of wit was worth a pound of argument.
He is one of the very few men whose names have been handed down to us by reason of the possession of this gift, and his career should be more fully studied.
[Footnote: See "Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith," by Duyckinck (1856); "Memoirs of Sydney Smith" by his daughter, Lady Holland (1855); "Life and Times of Sydney Smith," by Stuart J. Reid (London, 1844).]
VII.
THE LOVE OF THE BEAUTIFUL.
MEMORY GEMS.
The beautiful can never die.--Kingsley
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.--Keats
The love of beauty is an essential part of all healthy human nature.
--Ruskin
The sense of beauty is its own excuse for being.--Dr. Hedge
If eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for being.--Emerson
One of the princ.i.p.al objects of the large amount of "nature study" that, within recent years, has been pursued in our public schools, is to develop in the pupils the love of the beautiful. The beautiful in nature and art is that which gives pleasure to the senses. The question might be asked, "Why do some forms and colors please, and others displease?"
Yankee fashion, it might be answered by the question, "Why do we like sugar and dislike wormwood?" It is also a fact that cultivated minds derive more pleasure from nature and art than uncultivated minds.
This fact is aptly ill.u.s.trated by the following remark of a little girl in one of the lower grades of our public schools. Shortly after she had taken up the study of plants and minerals she came to her teacher and said, "Oh! we have a lovely time now when we go up to the reservoir to play. Before we studied about plants and stones, we used to go up there and sit down and look around; but now we find so many beautiful things to look at. We know the plants and stones; and what pleasure it does give us to find a new specimen!" This child"s love of the beautiful was being intelligently developed.
Natural beauty is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds into the numberless flowers of spring. It waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of gra.s.s. It haunts the depths of the earth and the sea, and gleams from the hues of the sh.e.l.l and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun--all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple; and those men who are alive to it cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompa.s.sed with it on every side. This beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it gives are so refined and pure, so congenial to our tenderest and n.o.blest feelings, and so akin to worship, that it is painful to think of the mult.i.tude of persons living in the midst of it and yet remaining almost as blind to it as if they were tenants of a dungeon.
All persons should seek to become sufficiently acquainted with the beautiful in nature to secure to themselves the rich fund of happiness which it is so well able to give. There is not a worm we tread upon, nor a rare leaf that dances merrily as it falls before the autumn winds, but has superior claims upon our study and admiration. The child who plucks a rose to pieces, or crushes the fragile form of a fluttering insect, destroys a work which the highest art could not create, nor man"s best skilled hand construct.
One of the first forms in which man"s idea of the beautiful shaped itself was in architecture. Extremely crude at first, this love for beautiful buildings has been highly developed among civilized nations.
Ruskin says, "All good architecture is the expression of national life and character, and is produced by a permanent and eager desire or taste for beauty."
A taste for pictures, merely, is not in itself a moral quality; but the taste for _good_ pictures is. A beautiful painting by one of the great artists, a Grecian statue, or a rare coin, or magnificent building, is a good and perfect thing; for it gives constant delight to the beholder.
The absence of the love of nature is not an a.s.sured ground of condemnation. Its presence is an invariable sign of goodness of heart, though by no means an evidence of moral practice. In proportion to the degree in which it is felt, will probably be the degree in which n.o.bleness and beauty of character will be attained.
One of our great artists has said, that good taste is essentially a moral quality. To his mind, the first, last, and closest trial question to any living creature is, What do you like? Tell me what you like, and I will tell you what you are.
Let us examine this argument. Suppose you go out into the street and ask the first person you meet what he likes? You happen to accost a man in rags with an unsteady step, who, straightening himself up in a half uncertain way, answers, "A pipe and a quart of beer." You can take a pretty good measure of his character from that answer, can you not? But here comes a little girl, with golden hair and soft, blue eyes. "What do you like, my little girl?" "My canary, and to run among the flowers," is her answer. And you, little boy, with dirty hands and low forehead, "What do you like?" "A chance to hit the sparrows with a stone." When we have secured so much knowledge of their tastes, we really know the character of these persons so well that we do not need to ask any further questions about them.
The man who likes what you like must belong to the same cla.s.s with you.
You may give him a different form of work to do, but as long as he likes the things that you like, and dislikes that which you dislike, he will not be content while employed in an inferior position.
Hearing a young lady highly praised for her beauty, Gotthold asked, "What kind of beauty do you mean? Merely that of the body, or that also of the mind? I see well that you have been looking no further than the sign which Nature displays outside the house, but have never asked for the host who dwells within. Beauty is an excellent gift of G.o.d, but many a pretty girl is like the flower called "the imperial crown," which is admired for its showy appearance, and despised for its unpleasant odor.
Were her mind as free from pride, selfishness, luxury, and levity, as her countenance is from spots and wrinkles, and could she govern her inward inclinations as she does her external carriage, she would have none to match her."
The power to appreciate beauty does not merely increase our sources of happiness,--it enlarges our moral nature too. Beauty calms our restlessness and dispels our cares. Go into the fields or the woods, spend a summer day by the sea or the mountains, and all your little perplexities and anxieties vanish. Listen to sweet music, and your foolish fears and petty jealousies pa.s.s away. The beauty of the world helps us to seek and find the beauty of goodness.
The love of the beautiful is an unfailing source of happiness. In his brief life, Regnault, the great painter, had more genuine enjoyment than a score of men of duller perceptions. He had cultivated his sense of color and proportion until nothing beautiful escaped his eye. If we are to enjoy the beauty about us, there is need of similar _preparation_.
What we get out of communion with the beauty of nature or art, depends largely on what we bring to that communion. We must make ourselves sensitive to beauty, or else the charms of form and color and graceful motion and sweet music will be unheeded or unappreciated. It is also true, as Lowell said: