all a compass as I can for myself, and never let them
annoy others." We all know the power of good cheer to magnify
everything.

Travelers are told by the Icelanders, who live amid the cold and
desolation of almost perpetual winter, that "Iceland is the best land
the sun shines upon."

"You are on the shady side of seventy, I expect?" was asked of an old
man. "No," was the reply, "I am on the sunny side; for I am on the side
nearest to glory."

A cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man. He does not cramp his
mind, nor take half-views of men and things. He knows that there is much
misery, but that misery need not be the rule of life. He sees that in
every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly
joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air full
of careering and rejoicing insects; that everywhere the good outbalances
the bad, and that every evil has its compensating balm.

"Bishop Fenelon is a delicious man," said Lord Peterborough; "I had to
run away from him to prevent his making me a Christian."

Hume, the historian, never said anything truer than--"To be happy, the
person must be cheerful and gay, not gloomy and melancholy. A propensity
to hope and joy is real riches; one to fear and sorrow, real poverty."

Dr. Johnson once remarked with his point and pith that the custom of
looking on the bright side of every event was better than having a
thousand pounds a year income. But Hume rated the value in dollars and
cents of cheerfulness still higher. He said he would rather have a
cheerful disposition always inclined to look on the bright side of
things than to be master of an estate with 10,000 pounds a year.

"We have not fulfilled every duty, unless we have fulfilled that of
being pleasant."

"If a word or two will render a man happy," said a Frenchman, "he must
be a wretch indeed, who will not give it. It is like lighting another
man's candle with your own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what
the other gains."

The sensible young man, in theory at least, chooses for his wife one who
will be able to keep his house, to be the mother of sturdy children, one
who will of all things meet life's experiences with a sweet temper. It
is impossible to imagine a pleasant home with a cross wife, mother or
sister, as its presiding genius. And it is a rule, with exceptions, that
good appetite and sound sleep induce amiability. If, with these
advantages, a girl or woma