A cheerful man is pre-eminently a useful man.  He does not “cramp his mind, nor take half views of men and things.”  He knows that there is much misery, but that misery is not the rule of life.  He sees that in every state people may be cheerful; the lambs skip, birds sing and fly joyously, puppies play, kittens are full of joyance, the whole air full of careering and rejoicing insects, that everywhere the good outbalances the bad, and that every evil that there is has its compensating balm.  Then the brave man, as our German cousins say, possesses the world, whereas the melancholy man does not even possess his own share of it.  Exercise, or continued employment of some kind, will make a man cheerful; but sitting at home, brooding and thinking, or doing little, will bring gloom.  The reaction of this feeling is wonderful.  It arises from a sense of duty done, and it also enables us to do our duty.  Cheerful people live long in our memory.  We remember joy more readily than sorrow, and always look back with tenderness on the brave and cheerful.  Autolycus repeats the burden of an old song with the truth that “a merry heart goes all the day, but your sad ones tires a mile a!” and what he says any one may notice, not only in ourselves, but in the inferior animals also.  A sulky dog, and a bad-tempered horse, wear themselves out with half the labor that kindly creatures do.  An unkindly cow will not give down her milk, and a sour sheep will not fatten; nay, even certain fowls and geese, to those who observe, will evidence temper—­good or bad.

We can all cultivate our tempers, and one of the employments of some poor mortals is to cultivate, cherish, and bring to perfection, a thoroughly bad one; but we may be certain that to do so is a very gross error and sin, which, like all others, brings its own punishment, though, unfortunately, it does not punish itself only.  If he “to whom God is pleasant is pleasant to God,” the reverse also holds good; and certainly the major proposition is true with regard to man.  Addison says of cheerfulness, that it lightens sickness, poverty, affliction; converts ignorance into an amiable simplicity, and renders deformity itself agreeable; and he says no more than the truth.  “Give us, therefore, O! give us”—­let us cry with Carlyle—­“the man who sings at his work!  Be his occupation what it may, he is equal to any of those who follow the same pursuit in silent sullenness.  He will do more in the same time; he will do it better; he will persevere longer.  One is scarcely sensible of fatigue whilst he marches to music.  The very stars are said to make harmony as they revolve in their appointed skies.”  “Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness! altogether past calculation the powers of its endurance.  Efforts, to be permanently useful must be uniformly joyous—­a spirit all sunshine—­graceful from very gladness—­beautiful because bright.”  Such a spirit is within every body’s reach.  Let us get out into the light of things.  The morbid