"But," you say, "while the advice is good it is very hard to follow it." Yes, but it is really harder not to heed it. "The bird that beats against the iron bars of its cage suffers more than the patient captive."
Laugh all you can. It is good for you. Physicians tell us that laughing has a direct and positive effect upon one's health. The physical movement caused by a hearty laugh causes the arteries to dilate and the flow of blood to hasten, thus promoting an acceleration of vital processes; and a mental action through stimulating the blood vessels of the brain. He who administers medicine in the shape of wit and humor to the sad heart is most assuredly a "good Samaritan."
The irresistible, good-humored philosophy of Mark Twain has relieved the depression and sorrow of multitudes. He has compelled us to laugh, and his mission in the world has been a beneficent one. A cheerful face is as good for an invalid as pleasant weather. Cheerfulness is health, melancholy is disease. Cheerfulness is just as natural to the heart of a man in sound moral and physical health as color to his cheeks, and wherever we see habitual gloom we may be sure there is something radically wrong in the animal economy or the moral sense.
Sydney Smith once gave a lady two-and-twenty receipts against melancholy. One was a bright fire; another, to remember all the pleasant things said to her; another, to keep a box of sugar plums on the chimney piece and a kettle simmering on the hob. These are trivial things in themselves but life is made up of these little pleasures and none should be neglected because of their seemingly trifling nature.
If our temperament does not make us naturally cheerful, we can, at least, cultivate those habits of body and mind which seem most favorable to the growth of this condition. We can keep the mind open to cheerful impressions, and close it to those that are gloomy. It is far better to magnify our blessings than to depreciate them. The Spaniard of whom Southey tells that he always put on his magnifying glasses when he ate cherries, in order to make them seem larger, had the true philosophy of life. So the ancient Pompeiians seem to have well understood the art of making the most of everything. Their gardens were very small, but by painting the surrounding walls with plants and landscapes their little area became indefinitely enlarged to the eye of the observer.
PERSONAL PECULIARITIES.
"Eccentricity may be harmless, but it never can be commendable; it is one of the children of that prolific failing—vanity. And whether it shows in feeling, manners, or peculiarities of dress, it is clearly acted upon from the presumptuous supposition that the many are in the wrong, the individual in the right."
Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts, but, being in its nature a convention, it loves what is conventional or what belongs to coming together. That makes the good and bad of manners, namely, what helps or hinders fellowship.