WHY GOOD CHEER WINS

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 19, 13 May 1909, Page 757

WHY GOOD CHEER WINS

No matter how disagreeable your work, or how much trouble you may have this year, resolve that, whatever comes to you or does not come to you, you will keep sweet, that you will not allow your disposition to sour, that you will face the sunlight, no matter how deep the shadows. ■ The determination to be cheerful will discourage multitudes of little worries that would otherwise harass you. If you cannot get rid of a trouble, do as the oyster does with the grain of sand that gets into the shell and irritates it. Cover it with pearl. Do as you would with an ugly rock or stump on your grounds. Cover it with ivy or roses, or something else which will beautify it. Make the best of it.

You can make poetry out of the prosiest life, and bring sunshine into v the darkest home; you can develop beauty and grace amid the ugliest surroundings. It is not circumstance so much as attitude of mind that gives hapiness.

' Nothing can disturb his good nature,' said a man of one of his employees ; ' that's why I like him. It does hot matter how much I scold him or find fault with him, he is always sunny. He never lays up anything against me, never resents anything.'

That is -recommendation enough for anybody. No wonder this man did not want to part with such an employee.

Who can estimate the value of a nature so sunny that it attracts everybody, repels nobody? Everybody wants to get near sunny people; everybody likes to know them. They open, without effort, doors which morose natures are obliged to pry open with great difficulty, or perhaps cannot open at all.

We all love the one who believes the sun shines when he cannot see it.

A potted rose in a window will turn its face away from the darkness toward the light. Turn it as often as you will, it always turns away from the darkness and lifts its face upward toward the sun.

So we, instinctively, shrink from cold, melancholy, inky natures, and turn our faces toward the bright, the cheerful, and the sunshiny. There is more virtue in one sunbeam than in a whole atmosphere of cloud and gloom.

Your ability to carry your own sunshine with you, your own lubricant, your own light, so that, no matter how heavy the load or dark the way, you will be equal to the emergency, will measure your ability to continue and to achieve. — Catholic Standard.