“Teach self-denial,” said Walter Scott, “and make its practice pleasurable, and you create for the world a destiny more sublime than ever issued from the brain of the wildest dreamer.”

Yet how many there are, ready to make some great sacrifice, who neglect those little acts of kindness which make so many lives brighter and happier.

“I say, Jim, it’s the first time I ever had anybody ask my parding, and it kind o’ took me off my feet.”  A young lady had knocked him down in hastily turning a corner.  She stopped and said to the ragged crossing-boy:  “I beg your pardon, my little fellow; I am very sorry I ran against you.”  He took off the piece of a cap he had on his skull, made a low bow, and said with a broad smile:  “You have my parding, Miss, and welcome; and the next time you run agin me, you can knock me clean down and I won’t say a word.”

One of the greatest mistakes of life is to save our smiles and pleasant words and sympathy for those of “our set,” or for those not now with us, and for other times than the present.

“If a word or two will render a man happy,” said a Frenchman, “he must be a wretch indeed who will not give it.  It is like lighting another man’s candle with your own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what the other gains.”

Sydney Smith recommends us to make at least one person happy every day:  “Take ten years, and you will make thirty-six hundred and fifty persons happy; or brighten a small town by your contribution to the fund of general joy.”  One who is cheerful is preeminently useful.

Dr. Baffles once said:  “I have made it a rule never to be with a person ten minutes without trying to make him happier.”  It was a remark of Dr. Dwight, that “one who makes a little child happier for half an hour is a fellow-worker with God.”

A little boy said to his mother:  “I couldn’t make little sister happy, nohow I could fix it.  But I made myself happy trying to make her happy.”  “I make Jim happy, and he laughs,” said another boy, speaking of his invalid brother; “and that makes me happy, and I laugh.”

There was once a king who loved his little boy very much, and took a great deal of pains to please him.  So he gave him a pony to ride, beautiful rooms to live in, pictures, books, toys without number, teachers, companions, and everything that money could buy or ingenuity devise; but for all this, the young prince was unhappy.  He wore a frown wherever he went, and was always wishing for something he did not have.  At length a magician came to the court.  He saw the scowl on the boy’s face, and said to the king:  “I can make your son happy, and turn his frowns into smiles, but you must pay me a great price for telling him this secret.”  “All right,” said the king; “whatever you ask I will give.”  The magician took the boy into a private room.  He wrote something with a white substance on a piece of paper.  He gave the boy a candle, and told him to light it and hold it under the paper, and then see what he could read.  Then the magician went away.  The boy did as he had been told, and the white letters turned into a beautiful blue.  They formed these words:  “Do a kindness to some one every day.”  The prince followed the advice, and became the happiest boy in the realm.