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Fisherman's Luck and Some Other Uncertain Things by Henry Van Dyke
page 51 of 169 (30%)
which is far more valuable and always fit. Indeed it underlies the
best fun and makes it wholesome. It is cheerfulness, the temper
which makes the best of things and squeezes the little drops of
honey even out of thistle-blossoms. I think this is what Montaigne
meant. Certainly it is what he had.

Cheerfulness is the background of all good talk. A sense of humour
is a means of grace. With it I have heard a pleasant soul make even
that most perilous of all subjects, the description of a long
illness, entertaining. The various physicians moved through the
recital as excellent comedians, and the medicines appeared like a
succession of timely jests.

There is no occasion upon which this precious element of talkability
comes out stronger than when we are on a journey. Travel with a
cheerless and easily discouraged companion is an unadulterated
misery. But a cheerful comrade is better than a waterproof coat and
a foot-warmer.

I remember riding once with my lady Graygown fifteen miles through a
cold rainstorm, in an open buckboard, over the worst road in the
world, from LAC A LA BELLE RIVIERE to the Metabetchouan River. Such
was the cheerfulness of her ejaculations (the only possible form of
talk) that we arrived at our destination as warm and merry as if we
had been sitting beside a roaring camp-fire.


But after all, the very best thing in good talk, and the thing that
helps it most, is FRIENDSHIP. How it dissolves the barriers that
divide us, and loosens all constraint, and diffuses itself like some
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