CHEERFULNESS.

The Habit of Cheerfulness.

It will help us in learning the lesson of cheerfulness if we persistently train ourselves to see the good things, the bright things, in our common life. There are some people who seem to have eyes only for the unpleasant things. They find every bit of roughness and hardness in their daily path. They see at once, and see it magnified, every disagreeable thing that comes into their life. They remember all the unhappy experiences they have ever had. They keep on their heart's walls the pictures of all their vanished joys and faded hopes. They write with a diamond on their window panes the records of all the trials, adversities and misfortunes they have ever suffered. But, on the other hand, they forget all their blessings. They hang up no pictures of the joys they did not lose, which have filled their life on so many bright days. They have no memory for the beautiful things, the things of gladness.

There are few habits more common, even among Christians, than this of remembering the unpleasant things and forgetting the pleasant things; and there is no other habit which is more inimical to joy. He who, would always be of good cheer must break this habit— if it has fastened itself in his life--and must learn, must train himself, to see the beautiful things and to be blind to the disagreeable things. The truth is, there are, in the ordinary life, a thousand pleasant things—favors, joys, comforts, things to cheer-to one unpleasant thing,

one real cause for unhappiness. It is a shame, therefore, to let the one bit of roughness, trial or suffering spoil all the gladness of the thousand blessings, the one discordant note mar all the music of the grand symphony. We should learn to look at life, not to find misery and discomfort in it, but to find cheer and beauty.-J. R. MILLER.

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Spin Cheerfully.

Spin cheerfully,

Not tearfully,

Though wearily you plod;
Spin carefully,

Spin prayerfully,

. But leave the thread with God.

The shuttles of His purpose move
To carry out His own design.
Seek not too soon to disapprove
His work, nor yet assign

Dark motives, when, with silent dread,

You view each somber fold;

For, lo! within each darker thread

There twines a thread of gold.

The Difference.

Some murmur when their sky is clear,
And wholly bright in view,

If one small speck of dark appear

In their great heaven of blue;
And some with thankful love are filled
If but one streak of light,

One ray of God's good mercy, gild

The darkness of their night.

R. C. TRENCH.

Cheerfulness a Blessing.

A cheerful temper, joined with innocence, will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit goodnatured. It will lighten sickness, poverty and affliction, convert ignorance into an amiable simplicity, and render deformity itself agreeable.-ADDISON.

Cheerfulness at Home.

Get you no hint of cheerfulness from grasshopper's leap, and lamb's frisk, and quail's whistle, and garrulous streamlet, which from the rock at the mountain top clear down to the meadow ferns under the shadow of the steep comes looking for the steepest place from which to leap off, and talking just to hear itself talk? If all the skies hurtled with tempest and everlasting storm wandered over the sea, and every mountain stream went raving mad, frothing at the mouth with mud foam, and there was nothing but simoons blowing among the hills, and

there were neither lark's carol nor humming-bird's trill, nor waterfall's dash, but only a bear's bark, and panther's scream, and wolf's howl, then you might well gather into your homes only the shadows. But when God has strewn the earth and the heavens with beauty and with gladness, let us take into our home circles all innocent hilarity, all brightness and all good cheer. A dark home makes bad boys and bad girls, in preparation for bad men and bad women.-Talmage.

Cheerful Pictures.

Do not always turn the blinds the wrong way. Let the light which puts gold on the gentian and spots the pansy pour into your dwellings. Do not expect the little feet to keep step to a dead march. Do not cover up your walls with such pictures as West's "Death on a Pale Horse," or Tintoretto's "Massacre of the Innocents." Rather cover them, if you have pictures, with "The Hawking Party," and "The Mill by the Mountain Stream," and "The Fox Hunt," and "The Children Amid the Flowers," and "The Harvest Scene," and "The Saturday Night Marketing."-TALMAGE.

Be of Good Cheer.

These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.-JESUS CHRIST.