Nothing can be more delightful than an anecdote of Joseph H. Choate, of New York, our Minister at the Court of St. James.  Upon being asked, at a dinner-party, who he would prefer to be if he could not be himself, he hesitated a moment, apparently running over in his mind the great ones on earth, when his eyes rested on Mrs. Choate at the other end of the table, who was watching him with great interest in her face, and suddenly replied, “If I could not be myself, I should like to be Mrs. Choate’s second husband.”

“Pleasant words are as a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and health to the bones.”  It is the little disputes, little fault-findings, little insinuations, little reflections, sharp criticisms, fretfulness and impatience, little unkindnesses, slurs, little discourtesies, bad temper, that create most of the discord and unhappiness in the family.  How much it would add to the glory of the homes of the world if that might be said of every one which Rogers said of Lord Holland’s sunshiny face:  “He always comes to breakfast like a man upon whom some sudden good fortune has fallen”!

The value of pleasant words every day, as you go along, is well depicted by Aunt Jerusha in what she said to our genial friend of “Zion’s Herald":—­

“If folks could have their funerals when they are alive and well and struggling along, what a help it would be”! she sighed, upon returning from a funeral, wondering how poor Mrs. Brown would have felt if she could have heard what the minister said.  “Poor soul, she never dreamed they set so much by her!

“Mis’ Brown got discouraged.  Ye see, Deacon Brown, he’d got a way of blaming everything on to her.  I don’t suppose the deacon meant it,—­’twas just his way,—­but it’s awful wearing.  When things wore out or broke, he acted just as if Mis’ Brown did it herself on purpose; and they all caught it, like the measles or the whooping-cough.

“And the minister a-telling how the deacon brought his young wife here when ’t wa’n’t nothing but a wilderness, and how patiently she bore hardship, and what a good wife she’d been!  Now the minister wouldn’t have known anything about that if the deacon hadn’t told him.  Dear!  Dear!  If he’d only told Mis’ Brown herself what he thought, I do believe he might have saved the funeral.

“And when the minister said how the children would miss their mother, seemed as though they couldn’t stand it, poor things!

“Well, I guess it is true enough,—­Mis’ Brown was always doing for some of them.  When they was singing about sweet rest in heaven, I couldn’t help thinking that that was something Mis’ Brown would have to get used to, for she never had none of it here.

“She’d have been awful pleased with the flowers.  They was pretty, and no mistake.  Ye see, the deacon wa’n’t never willing for her to have a flower-bed.  He said ’t was enough prettier sight to see good cabbages a-growing; but Mis’ Brown always kind of hankered after sweet-smelling things, like roses and such.