The San Francisco “Argonaut” says that a woman in Milpites, a victim of almost crushing sorrow, despondency, indigestion, insomnia, and kindred ills, determined to throw off the gloom which was making life so heavy a burden to her, and established a rule that she would laugh at least three times a day, whether occasion was presented or not; so she trained herself to laugh heartily at the least provocation, and would retire to her room and make merry by herself.  She was soon in excellent health and buoyant spirits; her home became a sunny, cheerful abode.

It was said, by one who knew this woman well, and who wrote an account of the case for a popular magazine, that at first her husband and children were amused at her, and while they respected her determination because of the griefs she bore, they did not enter into the spirit of the plan.  “But after awhile,” said this woman to me, with a smile, only yesterday, “the funny part of the idea struck my husband, and he began to laugh every time we spoke of it.  And when he came home, he would ask me if I had had my ‘regular laughs;’ and he would laugh when he asked the question, and again when I answered it.  My children, then very young, thought ‘mamma’s notion very queer,’ but they laughed at it just the same.  Gradually, my children told other children, and they told their parents.  My husband spoke of it to our friends, and I rarely met one of them but he or she would laugh and ask me, ’How many of your laughs have you had to-day?’ Naturally, they laughed when they asked, and of course that set me laughing.  When I formed this apparently strange habit I was weighed down with sorrow, and my rule simply lifted me out of it.  I had suffered the most acute indigestion; for years I have not known what it is.  Headaches were a daily dread; for over six years I have not had a single pain in the head.  My home seems different to me, and I feel a thousand times more interest in its work.  My husband is a changed man.  My children are called ’the girls who are always laughing,’ and, altogether, my rule has proved an inspiration which has worked wonders.”

The queen of fashion, however, says that we must never laugh out loud; but since the same tyrannical mistress kills people by corsets, indulges in cosmetics, and is out all night at dancing parties, and in China pinches up the women’s feet, I place much less confidence in her views upon the laugh cure for human woes.  Yet in all civilized countries it is a fundamental principle of refined manners not to be ill-timed and unreasonably noisy and boisterous in mirth.  One who is wise will never violate the proprieties of well-bred people.

“Yet,” says a wholesome writer upon health, “we should do something more than to simply cultivate a cheerful, hopeful spirit,—­we should cultivate a spirit of mirthfulness that is not only easily pleased and smiling, but that indulges in hearty, hilarious laughter; and if this faculty is not well marked in our organization we should cultivate it, being well assured that hearty, body-shaking laughter will do us good.”