"Encourage your child to be merry and laugh aloud; a good hearty laugh
expands the chest and makes the blood bound merrily along. Commend me to
a good laugh,--not to a little snickering laugh, but to one that will
sound right through the house. It will not only do your child good, but
will be a benefit to all who hear, and be an important means of driving
the blues away from a dwelling. Merriment is very catching, and spreads
in a remarkable manner, few being able to resist its contagion. A hearty
laugh is delightful harmony; indeed, it is the best of all music."
"Children without hilarity," says an eminent author, "will never amount
to much. Trees without blossoms will never bear fruit."

Hufeland, physician to the King of Prussia, commends the ancient custom
of jesters at the king's table, whose quips and cranks would keep the
company in a roar.

Did not Lycurgus set up the god of laughter in the Spartan eating-halls?
There is no table sauce like laughter at meals. It is the great enemy of
dyspepsia.


How wise are the words of the acute Chamfort, that the most completely
lost of all days is the one in which we have not laughed!

"A crown, for making the king laugh," was one of the items of expense
which the historian Hume found in a manuscript of King Edward II.

"It is a good thing to laugh, at any rate," said Dryden, the poet, "and
if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness."