Do I believe in laughter as much as ever I did? A great deal more than ever I did, even in the days that were ripples of dimples on the sunlit eddies of a river of laughter. How could life be best lived without it—God’s exclusive gift to his human children? Laughter is a good servant. But don’t overwork him or he will sulk, and maybe strike for shorter hours. Don’t smile so much all day that the corners of your mouth droop with weariness when you come home at night. “Always leave them with a laugh” is the axiom of a commercial traveler who has no home. Laughter is cheery, good-natured, willing, but wearies easily. He is a poor hand at “day’s work” and tires at a continuous job. He is a thoroughbred, and must be humored and well groomed. You can’t work him like a plow-horse. He shines most brightly at “piece work.” He must needs have intervals of quiet meditation; sober reflection; tranquil introspection. He must have the inspiration of earnest purpose; the repose of a little minute of prayer. Don’t mistake the ever-lasting barnyard cackle that emanates from between the roof of the mouth and the glottis for Laughter. Unless there is brain and heart—intellect and love in it—it isn’t the laughter that I know anything about. The thing on the face of a skull is a grin, but it isn’t a smile. It used to be, but the smile died when it became perpetual. No matter what the empty-headed philosophers say on the postcards, don’t try to smile all the time. Unless you want people to hate the sight of you.
Life is a book in which we read a page a day. We can’t read a page ahead; we cannot turn clear over to the last chapter to see how it ends, because we write the story ourselves, setting the type, as a good compositor can do, from the copy of our own thoughts and actions, till the evening of each day runs off the edition. The best compositor is he who sets each day’s page with the fewest errors, and wastes the least time correcting a “dirty proof.” Even with the best of us, much of each day’s page is an “errata” correcting the mistakes of yesterday. Unsinkable ships—the bottom of the sea is covered with them. Invulnerable armor—it cumbers the reefs, full of holes. Incontrovertible arguments and incontestable theories—they lie dusting in the scrap-heaps of history and philosophy, answered, contradicted, disproved and thrown away. But the pages are—or should be—growing cleaner every day. The compositor learns. The child is fearless, knowing nothing. So he grasps the flaming candle. The old man is cautious, knowing too much. He knows that ice burns like fire. And another thing to be remembered about this book of life which every one of us is writing, each for himself. The pages are all the same size—twenty-four hours, brevier measure. “The evening and the morning was the first day.” That established the standard. And every morning the inexorable office boy with the intolerable name stands at your door shouting “copy!” And you’ve got to furnish it. Got to. Got to. Got to. Kill your grandmother once a week to get to the ball game if you will—that goes into your “story” and fills up that day’s page. That’s life.
Is the world as funny as it used to be? Funnier, my son; a great deal funnier. It grows “funnier” as you grow older. But it doesn’t know it, because it is apt to be “funniest” when it thinks it is wisest. Laughter grows more serious as it contemplates the funny old world. The tragedies of the years temper the jests. Yes; I understand. I read a paragraph about myself in a critical editorial the other day, saying that “ten years of the ministry had taken much of the ginger out of old Bob’s fun.” It was written by a young man, of course. The things that are funny to him were uproariously funny to me fifty years ago. I used to write funny sketches about sudden death and funerals. But during ten years of the ministry I have sat beside many deathbeds, and have stood beside many caskets trying to speak words of consolation for breaking hearts. Today, I can’t laugh over “Buck Fanshaw’s Funeral”—the funniest mortuary narrative ever written. Misfortunes used to be my principal stock in trade for mirthful sketches. Ten years in the ministry have made the sorrows of thousands of people my own. What a rollick there used to be in a good poker story, told in rattling phrase. I have seen too many homes broken up and too many lives wrecked by the gamblers to appreciate the humor of the cards. Twice I have seen men murdered at the gaming table—and each murder was followed by a hanging. Hard to write funny poker stories with those grisly phantoms of blood and strangling leering up into your face from the white sheet under your pen. Eh? And when there was nothing else to write about on a dull day, the drunkard was always an unfailing figure for comedy. What could be funnier than a drunken man? Well, now I can no more appreciate the drunken man, even on the comic stage, than the wife whose face he bruised with his clenched fist could appreciate the antics of her drunken husband. I have seen the brute too often at close range, with all the old manhood gone, and not a thing but the brute and the devil left. Oh, I enjoy life better than ever I did. I can assure my critic that “ginger is still hot i’ the mouth.” The world is just as funny as ever. But the fun has changed with the point of view. Don’t you understand, son? It’s the old story of the frogs and the boys. Humor is a matter of personal taste, to a great extent. What sends your neighbor into convulsions of mirth may disgust you to the very soul.
It has been such a good world that I’d be sorry ever to leave it, if there wasn’t another one, as much better than this, as this one is better than the chaos out of which it was born. No; I don’t just “believe” this; I know it. That’s one of the few things I do know—positively, absolutely, certainly, and I didn’t have to wait for Sir Oliver Lodge to tell me about it, either. I knew that when I was a boy, just as well as Sir Oliver knows it now, and for the same reasons, and with the same proofs. All this summer and late into the autumn days we have been living in our seaside home, “Eventide,”—so named by Mrs. Burdette because it faces the sunset. “Afternoon land” is very pleasant in spite of broken health and increasing weakness. Every evening I sit in the sun-room and watch the sun creep down the western wall of the sky, sinking to its rest beyond the farther rim of the blue Pacific. I know what is over there, because I have journeyed in those lands, and can follow the sun as he fades out of sight and begins to illuminate the Orient. There, just where he drops below the waves, rise the green shores of picturesque Japan. Yokohama, Tokyo, Nikko, snow-crowned Fujihama, the beautiful Inland Sea,—I can see them all. There where that silver star is shining through the crimson bars of the clouds, is China. Over there, where the clouds are white as snow banks—there is Manila. Yonder, where the black cloud is tipped with flame, is Port Arthur. I know them all. I have been there. Well, beyond the gates of the sunset, farther away than the stars, away past the bars of the night, there is another land. I have never seen it. I have never seen anyone who has been there. But all that I know about the oriental lands in which I have journeyed is mere conjecture with my positive belief in that Blessed Land which eye hath not seen. That Fair and Happy Country I do know. Know it with a sublime assurance which is never shadowed by a cloud of passing doubt. I may become confused in my terrestrial geography. But this Heaven of ours—no man, no circumstance can ever shake my faith in that. As the sun sinks lower and the skies grow darker in the deepening twilight, the star of Faith shines more brightly and Hope sings more clearly and sweetly. Every evening, when the sun goes down, I can see that land of Eternal Morning. I know it is there, not because I have seen it, but because I do see it. The Shadowless Land, “where we shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; where there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; where God shall dwell with men, and they shall be His people, and He shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.”
The shadows are deeping around the pond and the stream is singing itself to sleep. But there is yet a little grist in the hopper, and while the water serves I will keep on grinding. And by the time the sun is down, and the flow in the race is not enough to turn the big wheel, the grist will have run out, and I will have the old mill swept and tidied for the night. And then, for home and a cheery evening, a quiet night, lighted with stars and pillowed with sleep. And after that, the dawning, and another day; fairer than any I have ever seen in this beautiful world of roseate mornings and radiant sunsets.