recognised this so far that one of his patients told me that his visits
were like a bottle of Champagne; and Sir John Byles observes,
"Cheerfulness eminently conduces to health both of body and mind; it is
one of the great physicians of nature.

"Il y a trois médecins qui ne se trompent pas,
La gaité, le doux exercice, et le modeste repas.

Every hour redeemed from despondency and melancholy, and bathed in the
sunshine of cheerfulness, is an hour of true life gained."

Our views with regard to the first appearance of laughter depend on
whether we consider that man was gradually developed from the primeval
oyster, or that he came into the world much in the same condition as
that in which we find him now. If we adopt the former opinion, we must
consider that no outward expressions of feeling originally existed; if
the latter, that they were from the first almost as perfect as they are
at present. But I think that we shall be on tolerably safe ground, and
have the support of probability and history, if we say that, in his
earliest condition, the mental endowments of man were of the very
humblest description, but that he had always a tendency to progress and
improve. This view obtains some little corroboration from the fact that
the sounds animals utter in the early stages of their lives are not
fully developed, and that the children of the poor are graver and more
silent than those of the educated classes. But a certain predisposition
to laughter there always was, for what animal has ever produced any but
its own characteristic sound? Has not everyone its own natural mode of
expression? Does not the dog show its pleasure by wagging its tail, and
the cat by purring? We never find one animal adopting the vocal sounds
of another--a bird never mews, and a cat never sings. Some men have been