Do We Laugh Enough?

Woodville Examiner, Volume 3, Issue 284, 17 September 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

Do We Laugh Enough?

Do we, as a rule, laugh enough 1 Is there not too much beefsteak and too little gravy for salutary digestion in the everyday consumption of the brain food ? Is there spice enough to season the standing dish of drudgery ? There is benefit in a chaste laugh, and its relation to physical comfort is noteworthy. Our emotions are the plaything of our surroundings, and the graces we would cultivate can never be perfected in an atmosphere that is not cordial. The nightmare of disaster is ever disturbing new endeavors and cherished ventures, and if it is to be dispelled the handiest helper is the sunshine of mirth. To one who is in the maelstorm of cares, or who is a galley slave in the struggle to exist, or on whose cast of dice is staked the gain or loss by living, there is no force that can sustain as broad humor. Music has a power to lighten loads, to relax brows, but a sideshaker seems to be quite as salutary to the weary ones in the market place. A ditty travels to the springs of the feel-. ings, but a neatly-perpetrated joke makes the man of care take cheer as he toils. The mind that is lost to every appeal save the requisitions of his vocation needs to be switched off, and a handy way to do it is to tickle him. It is said of Lincoln that his indulgence in laughing and dry satirizing was a physical necessity—that the responsibilities of his policy during the war between North and South would have chafed him to despair had he not repeatedly laughed away his fears or stilled his forebodings with funny exuberances.