"We must write the song
Whatever the words,
Whatever its rhyme or meter;
And if it is sad, we must make it glad,
And if sweet, we must make it sweeter."




VI. "LOOKING PLEASANT"--SOMETHING TO BE WORKED FROM THE INSIDE.


Acting on a sudden impulse, an elderly woman, the widow of a soldier who
had been killed in the Civil War, went into a photographer's to have her
picture taken. She was seated before the camera wearing the same stern,
hard, forbidding look that had made her an object of fear to the
children living in the neighborhood, when the photographer, thrusting
his head out from the black cloth, said suddenly, "Brighten the eyes a
little."

She tried, but the dull and heavy look still lingered.

"Look a little pleasanter," said the photographer, in an unimpassioned
but confident and commanding voice.

"See here," the woman retorted sharply, "if you think that an old woman
who is dull can look bright, that one who feels cross can become
pleasant every time she is told to, you don't know anything about human
nature. It takes something from the outside to brighten the eye and
illuminate the face."