The first prize at a flower-show was taken by a pale, sickly little girl, who lived in a close, dark court in the east of London.  The judges asked how she could grow it in such a dingy and sunless place.  She replied that a little ray of sunlight came into the court; as soon as it appeared in the morning, she put her flower beneath it, and, as it moved, moved the flower, so that she kept it in the sunlight all day.

“Water, air, and sunshine, the three greatest hygienic agents, are free, and within the reach of all.”  “Twelve years ago,” says Walt Whitman, “I came to Camden to die.  But every day I went into the country, and bathed in the sunshine, lived with the birds and squirrels, and played in the water with the fishes.  I received my health from Nature.”

“It is the unqualified result of all my experience with the sick,” said Florence Nightingale, “that second only to their need of fresh air, is their need of light; that, after a close room, what most hurts them is a dark room; and that it is not only light, but direct sunshine they want.”

“Sunlight,” says Dr. L. W. Curtis, in “Health Culture,” “has much to do in keeping air in a healthy condition.  No plant can grow in the dark, neither can man remain healthy in a dark, ill-ventilated room.  When the first asylum for the blind was erected in Massachusetts, the committee decided to save expense by not having any windows.  They reasoned that, as the patients could not see, there was no need of any light.  It was built without windows, but ventilation was well provided for, and the poor sightless patients were domiciled in the house.  But things did not go well:  one after another began to sicken, and great languor fell upon them; they felt distressed and restless, craving something, they hardly knew what.  After two had died and all were ill, the committee decided to have windows.  The sunlight poured in, and the white faces recovered their color; their flagging energies and depressed spirits revived, and health was restored.”

The sun, making all living things to grow, exerts its happiest influence in cheering the mind of man and making his heart glad, and if a man has sunshine in his soul he will go on his way rejoicing; content to look forward if under a cloud, not bating one jot of heart or hope if for a moment cast down; honoring his occupation, whatever it be; rendering even rags respectable by the way he wears them; and not only happy himself, but giving happiness to others.

How a man’s face shines when illuminated by a great moral motive! and his manner, too, is touched with the grace of light.

“Nothing will supply the want of sunshine to peaches,” said Emerson, “and to make knowledge valuable you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom.”

“Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness,” said Carlyle; “altogether past calculation its powers of endurance.  Efforts to be permanently useful must be uniformly joyous,—­a spirit all sunshine, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright.”