the
average expression of a Fourth of July crowd, one doubts if ever so much
multiplication of that kind of holiday would mend the matter. No doubt we
work for too many days in the year, and play for too few; but, after all,
it is the heart and the spirit and the expression that we bring to our
work, and not those that we bring to our play, by which our real vitality
must be tested and by which our faces will be stamped. If we do not work
healthfully, reasoningly, moderately, thankfully, joyously, we shall have
neither moderation nor gratitude nor joy in our play. And here is the
hopelessness, here is the root of the trouble, of the joyless American
face. The worst of all demons, the demon of unrest and overwork, broods in
the very sky of this land. Blue and clear and crisp and sparkling as our
atmosphere is, it cannot or does not exorcise the spell. Any old man can
count on the fingers of one hand the persons he has known who led lives of
serene, unhurried content, made for themselves occupations and not tasks,
and died at last what might be called natural deaths.

"What, then?" says the congressional candidate from Mettibemps; the "new
contributor" to the oceanic magazine; Mrs. Potiphar, from behind her
liveries; and poor Dives, senior, from Wall Street; "Are we to give up all
ambition?" God forbid. But, because one has a goal, must one be torn by
poisoned spurs? We see on the Corso, in the days of the Carnival, what
speed can be made by horses under torture. Shall we try those methods and
that pace on our journeys?

So long as the American is resolved to do in one day the work of two, to
make in one year the fortune of his whole life and his children's, to earn
before he is forty the reputation which belongs to threescore and ten, so
long he will go about the streets wearing his present abject, pitiable,
overwrought, joyless look. But, even without a change of heart or a reform
of habits, he might better his countenance a little, if he would. Even if
he does not feel like smiling, he might smile, if he tried; and that would
be something. The muscles are all there; they count the same in the
American as in the French or the Irish face; they relax easily in youth;
the trick can be learned. And even a trick of it is better than none of
it. Laughing masters might be as well paid as dancing masters to help on
society! "Smiling made Easy" or the "Complete Art of Looking
Good-natured" would be as taking titles on book-selle