Charles Dickens says: "It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable, honest-hearted, duty-doing man flows out into the world." A bright, cheerful, sunshiny daughter in a home can never know how great is her influence for making the little household world holier and happier for all whose life Who has not experienced how, on nearer acquaintance, plainness becomes beautified, and beauty loses its charm, according to the quality of the heart and mind.—Fredrika Bremer. interests are centered therein. Hamilton Wright Mabie says: "The day is dark only when the mind is dark; all weathers are pleasant when the heart is at rest." Bliss Carman observes that "happiness, perhaps, comes by the grace of Heaven, but the wearing of a happy countenance, the preserving of a happy mien, is a duty, not a blessing." This thought that it is one’s duty to be happy Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low,—an excellent thing in woman.—Shakespeare. is set forth still more forcibly by Lilian Whiting: "No one has any more right to go about unhappy than he has to go about ill-bred."
The girl with sunshine in her thoughts and sunshine in her eyes will find Gentleness, cheerfulness, and urbanity are the Three Graces of manners.—Marguerite de Valois. sunshine everywhere. Wherever she may go her gracious presence will light the way and make her every path more smooth and beautiful. In the home, in the school, amid whatever conditions surround her, she will shine with the glow of a rose in bloom. She will see the good and the beautiful in the persons whom she meets; while all the charms of nature, as portrayed in field and forest, will be to her a never-ending source of interest and enjoyment. Above all, she will warmly cherish life and look upon To have what we want is riches, but to be able to do without is power.—George MacDonald. it as being crowded with priceless opportunities for obtaining happiness for herself and for others. She will be filled with the same exhuberant spirit of joy in the mere fact of her being that Mrs. Holden so happily sets forth: "I love this world. I never walk out in the morning when all its radiant colors are newly washed with dew, or at splendid noon, when, like an untired racer, the sun has flashed around his mid-day course, or at evening, when a fringe of a shadow, A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.—Thoreau. like the lash of a weary eye, droops over mountain and valley and sea, or in the majestic pomp of night when stars swarm together like bees, and the moon clears its way through the golden fields as a sickle through the ripened wheat, that I do not hug myself for very joy that I am yet alive. What matter if I am poor and unsheltered and costumeless?
In truth, how could I feel this gladness now had I not known the bitterness of woe.—Alicia K. Van Buren. Thank God, I am yet alive! People who tire of this world before they are seventy and pretend that they are ready to leave it, are either crazy or stuck as full of bodily ailments as a cushion is of pins. The happy, the warm-blooded, the sunny-natured and the loving cling to life as petals cling to the calyx of a Of all the joys we can bring into our own lives there is none so joyous as that which comes to us as the result of caring for others and brightening sad lives.—E. C. Burke. budding rose. By and by, when the rose is over-ripe, or when the frosts come and the November winds are trumpeting through all the leafless spaces of the woods, will be time to die. It is no time now, while there is a dark space left on earth that love can brighten, while there is a human lot to be alleviated by a smile, or a burden to be lifted with a sympathizing tear."
We all understand that it is not so difficult for us to be bright and smiling and gracious toward everyone when there is naught to disturb the serenity of our Human improvement is from within outward.—Froude. thoughts, and when nothing happens to interfere with the fulfillment of our wishes. But when things go "at sixes and sevens," when our dearest purposes are thwarted, when some one is about to gain the place or prize which we covet, when we are forced to stay within doors when we very much prefer to go in the fields; then it requires more of character, more of strength, more of the true spirit of sacrifice to wear a smiling face and to maintain a cheerful heart. But instead of fleeing from the Cheerfulness and content are great beautifiers, and are famous preservers of good looks.—Dickens. petty trials that cross our paths we should welcome them as opportunities for testing and strengthening our good purposes. Newcomb tells us: "Disappointment should always be taken as a stimulant, and never viewed as a discouragement." To the sunshiny, philosophical person, trials and difficulties but serve to help him to develop into
THE PRIZE WINNER
Oh, the man who wins the prize
Is the one who bravely tries,
As he works his way amid the toil and stress,
Through the college of Hard Knocks,
So to hew his stumbling-blocks,
They will serve as stepping-stones toward success.
The law of true living is toil.—J. R. Miller. Sunshine has ever been deemed by the close students of life as a most essential element in the achievement We may make the best of life, or we may make the worst of it, and it depends very much upon ourselves whether we extract joy or misery from it.—Smiles. of the highest and fullest success. The optimist sees open paths leading to pleasant and prosperous fields of endeavor where the pessimist can see no way out of the hopeless surroundings amid which he has been thrust by an unkind fate. The disposition to seize upon the opportunities Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the world at a standstill.—Helen Keller. lying close at hand and to believe that the here and now is full of sunshine and golden possibilities has carried many a one to success, where others, lacking the illumination born of good cheer and a hope well grounded in a broad and beautiful faith, have sat complainingly by the He that riseth late, must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night.—Benjamin Franklin. way and permitted the golden chances to go by unobserved.
"Born of only ordinary capacity, but of extraordinary persistency," said Professor Maria Mitchell, the distinguished astronomer, in the later years of It is great folly not to part with your own faults, which is possible, but to try instead to escape from other people’s faults, which is impossible.—Marcus Aurelius. her life in looking back upon her career. But she added, with a simplicity as rare as it is pleasing: "I did not quite take this in, myself, until I came to mingle with the best girls of our college, and to become aware how rich their mines are and how little they have been worked." At sixteen she left school, and at eighteen accepted the position of librarian of the Nantucket public library. Her duties were light and she had ample opportunity, surrounded as she was by books, Labor is discovered to be the grand conquerer, enriching and building up nations more surely than the proudest battles.—William Ellery Channing. to read and study, while leisure was also left her to pursue by practical observation the science in which she afterward became known. Those who dwell upon the smaller islands, among which must be classed Nantucket, her island It is easier to leave the wrong thing unsaid than to unsay it.—George Horace Lorimer. home, learn almost of necessity to study the sea and the sky. The Mitchell family possessed an excellent telescope. From childhood Maria had been accustomed to the use of this instrument, searching out with its aid, the distant sails upon the horizon by day, and viewing the stars by night. Her father possessed a marked taste for astronomy, and carried on an independent series of observations. He taught his daughter all he knew, and what was more to her advancement, she applied herself to the study and made as much independent Work is the inevitable condition of human life, the true source of human welfare.—Tolstoi. advancement as was possible for her to do. It was this cheerful willingness to make the most of her immediate surroundings that proved to be the secret of her world-wide fame in after years when her name was included with those of the other prominent astronomers of the world. At half past ten of the evening of October First, 1847, If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it. Toil is the law. Pleasure comes through toil, and not by self-indulgence and indolence. When one gets to love work, his life is a happy one.—Ruskin. she made the discovery which first brought her name before the public. She was gazing through her glass with her usual quiet intentness when she was suddenly startled to perceive "an unknown comet, nearly vertical above Polaris, about five degrees." At first she could not believe her eyes; then hoping and doubting, scarcely daring to think that she had really made a discovery, she obtained its right ascension and declination. She then told her father, who gave One of the grandest things in having rights is that, being your rights, you may give them up.—George MacDonald. the news to the other astronomers and to the world, and her claim to the discovery was duly accepted and ever after stood to her lasting credit. But had she not been interested in her work and competent to seize upon and to make the most of the opportunity that presented itself, she would not have been able to make herself the first of all the beings of our earth to observe and record this strange visitant to our starry realms above us.
Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important in some respects, whether he chooses to be or not.—Hawthorne. It is the faith which the sunshiny spirit has in the "worth whileness" of life and its possibilities that makes him or her who possesses it prepare for the best that is to come. It is because of the "preparedness" achieved by labor that men and women are able to seize upon and make the most of the "lucky chance" that may bring them happiness and success.
Expediency is man’s wisdom. Doing right is God’s.—George Meredith. While Thomas A. Edison was yet a youth, the desire to make himself of worth to the world and to be able to do something that would make him a living while he was still fitting himself for better things, he spent the leisure which most Diamonds are found only in the dark places of the earth; truths are found only in the depths of thought.—Victor Hugo. boys would spend in idleness or purposeless pastime in learning the telegrapher’s code. Later on this knowledge gave him work which enabled him to gain experience as a telegraph operator, which in turn led to his invention of the quadruplex telegraph. But the invention was temporarily a I simply declare my determination not to feed on the broth of literature when I can get strong soup.—George Eliot. failure, although later on a great success. Sorely reduced in circumstances, he was one day tramping the streets of New York without a cent.