use, is within
the reach of practically everyone,' the amiable doctor asserted. 'It is
restlessness, ambition, discontent, and disquietude that make us grow
old prematurely by carving wrinkles on our faces. Wrinkles do not appear
on faces that have constantly smiled. Smiling is the best possible
massage. Contentment is the Fountain of Youth.'

That same evening he was the guest at a banquet given by a Boston club,
to which I had been kindly invited. When he rose to make a speech, they
cheered and applauded to the echo. His face was radiant, beautiful.
After he sat down, I said to him:

'Are you not tired of cheers and applause, after all these years of
triumphs?'

'No,' he replied; 'they never cheer loud enough, they never applaud long
enough to please me.'

Oliver Wendell Holmes was right; he had found the key to happiness.

The philosophers of all ages have deservedly condemned that universal
discontent and disquietude which runs through every rank of society and
degree of life as one of the bitterest reproaches of human nature, as
well as the highest affront to the Divine Author of it.

If we look through the whole creation, and remark the progressive scale
of beings as they rise into perfection, we shall perceive, to our own
shame, that every one seems satisfied with that share of life that has
been allotted to it, man alone excepted. He is pleased with nothing,
perpetually repining at the decrees of Providence, and refusing to enjoy
what he has, from a ridiculous and never-ceasing desire for what he has
not.

He is ambitious, restless, and unhappy, and instead of dying young at
eighty, dies old at forty. He misses happiness which is close at hand
all his lifetime. The object which is at a distance from him is always
the most inviting, and that possession the most valuable which he cannot
acquire. With the ideas of affluence and grandeur he is apt to associate
those of joy, pleasure, and happiness.

Because riches and power may conduce to happiness, he hastily concludes
that they must do so. Alas! pomp, splendour, and magnificence, which
attend the great, are visible to every eye, while the sorrows which they
feel escape our observation. Hence it arises that almost every condition
and circumstance of life is considered preferable to our own, that we so
often court ruin and do our very best to be unhappy.

We complain when we ought to be thankful; we weep when we ought to
rejoice; we fidget and fret. Inste