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 dis comfort in it, but to find cheer and beauty.-J. R. MILLER. 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 Dark motives, when, with silent dread, You view each somber fold; For, lo! within each darker thread There twines a thread of gold. Spin cheerfully, Not tearfully, He knows the way you plod; Spin carefully, Spin prayerfully, But leave the thread with God. ANONYMOUS. The Difference. Some murmur when their sky is clear, If one small speck of dark appear 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. |