a gift it is," said Beecher, who was the great preacher of cheerfulness, "to make all men better and happier without knowing it! We do not suppose that flowers know how sweet they are. These roses and carnations have made me happy for a day. Yet they stand huddled together in my pitcher, without seeming to know my thoughts of them, or the gracious work they are doing. And how much more is it, to have a disposition that carries with it involuntarily sweetness, calmness, courage, hope, and happiness. Yet this is the portion of good nature in a large-minded, strong-natured man. When it has made him happy, it has scarcely begun its office. God sends a natural heart-singer—a man whose nature is large and luminous, and who, by his very carriage and spontaneous actions, calms, cheers, and helps his fellows. God bless him, for he blesses everybody!" This is just what Mr. Beecher would have said about Phillips Brooks.
And what better can be said than to compare the heart's good cheer to a floral offering? Are not flowers appropriate gifts to persons of all ages, in any conceivable circumstances in which they are placed? So the heart's good cheer and deeds of kindness are always acceptable to children and youth, to busy men and women, to the aged, and to a world of invalids.
"Thus live and die, O man immortal," says Dr. Chalmers. "Live for something. Do good, and leave behind you a monument of virtue, which the storms of time can never destroy. Write your name in kindness, love, and mercy, on the hearts of those who come in contact with you, and you will never be forgotten. Good deeds will shine as brightly on earth as the stars of heaven."
What is needed to round out human happiness is a well-balanced life. Not ease, not pleasure, not happiness, but a man, Nature is after. "There is," says Robert Waters, "no success without honor; no happiness without a clear conscience; no use in living at all if only for one's self. It is not at all necessary for you to make a fortune, but it is necessary, absolutely necessary, that you should become a fair-dealing, honorable, useful man, radiating goodness and cheerfulness wherever you go, and making your life a blessing."
"When a man does not find repose in himself," says a French proverb, "it is vain for him to seek it elsewhere." Happy is he who has no sense of discord with the harmony of the universe, who is open to the voices of nature and of the spiritual realm, and who sees the light that never was on sea or land. Such a life can but give expression to its inward harmony. Every pure and healthy thought, every noble aspiration for the good and the true, every longing of the heart for a higher and better life, every lofty purpose and unselfish endeavor, makes the human spirit stronger, more harmonious, and more beautiful. It is this alone that gives a self-centered confidence in one's heaven-aided powers, and a high-minded cheerfulness, like that of a celestial spirit. It is this which an old writer has called the paradise of a good conscience.
"I count this thing to be grandly true,
That a noble deed is a step toward God;
Lifting the soul from the common clod
To a purer air and a broader view.
"We rise by the things that are under our feet;
By what we have mastered of good or gain;
By the pride deposed and the passion slain,
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet."
"My body must walk the earth," said an ancient poet, "but I can put wings on my soul, and plumes to my hardest thought." The splendors and symphonies and the ecstacies of a higher world are with us now in the rudimentary organs of eye and ear and heart. Much we have to do, much we have to love, much we have to hope for; and our "joy is the grace we say to God." "When I think upon God," said Haydn to Carpani, "my heart is so full of joy that the notes leap from my pen."
Says Gibbons:—
"Our lives are songs:
God writes the words,
And we set them to music at leisure;
And the song is sad, or the song is glad,
As we choose to fashion the measure.
"We must write the song
Whatever the words,
Whatever its rhyme or meter;
And if it is sad, we must make it glad,
And if sweet, we must make it sweeter."
VI. "Looking Pleasant"—Something To Be Worked From The Inside.
Acting on a sudden impulse, an elderly woman, the widow of a soldier who had been killed in the Civil War, went into a photographer's to have her picture taken. She was seated before the camera wearing the same stern, hard, forbidding look that had made her an object of fear to the children living in the neighborhood, when the photographer, thrusting his head out from the black cloth, said suddenly, "Brighten the eyes a little."
She tried, but the dull and heavy look still lingered.
"Look a little pleasanter," said the photographer, in an unimpassioned but confident and commanding voice.
"See here," the woman retorted sharply, "if you think that an old woman who is dull can look bright, that one who feels cross can become pleasant every time she is told to, you don't know anything about human nature. It takes something from the outside to brighten the eye and illuminate the face."
"Oh, no, it doesn't! It's something to be worked from the inside. Try it again," said the photographer good-naturedly.
Something in his manner inspired faith, and she tried again, this time with better success.
"That's good! That's fine! You look twenty years younger," exclaimed the artist, as he caught the transient glow that illuminated the faded face.
She went home with a queer feeling in her heart. It was the first compliment she had received since her husband had passed away, and it left a pleasant memory behind. When she reached her little cottage, she looked long in the glass and said, "There may be something in it. But I'll wait and see the picture."
When the picture came, it was like a resurrection. The face seemed alive with the lost fires of youth. She gazed long and earnestly, then said in a clear, firm voice, "If I could do it once, I can do it again."
Approaching the little mirror above her bureau, she said, "Brighten up, Catherine," and the old light flashed up once more.
"Look a little pleasanter!" she commanded; and a calm and radiant smile diffused itself over the face.
Her neighbors, as the writer of this story has said, soon remarked the change that had come over her face: "Why, Mrs. A., you are getting young. How do you manage it?"
"It is almost all done from the inside. You just brighten up inside and feel pleasant."
"Fate served me meanly, but I looked at her and laughed,
That none might know how bitter was the cup I quaffed.
Along came Joy and paused beside me where I sat,
Saying, 'I came to see what you were laughing
