was about ready to cry, Henry he says:--

"'Come on, Jim. I know where there's lots of nuggets.'

"An' what do you s'pose, now? That boy had a kind of a game that that
there field was what he called a plasser mining field; and he got me
into it, and I could 'a' sworn I was in Californy all day,--I had such a
good time.

"'Only,' says Henry, after we'd got through the day's work, 'the way you
get rich with these nuggets is to get rid of 'em, instead of to get
'em.'

"That somehow didn't strike my fancy, but we'd had play instead of work,
anyway, an' a great lot of stones had been rooted out of that field.

"An', as I said before, I can't give ye any dictionary definition of
optimism; but if your Uncle Henry wa'n't an optimist, I don't know what
one is."

At life's outset, says one, a cheerful optimistic temperament is worth
everything. A cheerful man, who always "feels first-rate," who always
looks on the bright side, who is ever ready to snatch victory from
defeat, is the successful man.

Everybody avoids the company of those who are always grumbling, who are
full of "ifs" and "buts," and "I told you so's." We like the man who
always looks toward the sun, whether it shines or not. It is the
cheerful, hopeful man we go to for sympathy and assistance; not the
carping, gloomy critic,--who always thinks it is going to rain, and that