"Be good and you will be happy," is a very old piece of advice. Mrs.
Mary A. Livermore now proposes to reverse it,--"Be happy and you will be
good." If unhappiness is a bad habit, you are to turn about by sheer
force of will and practice cheerfulness. "Happiness is a thing to be
practiced like a violin."

Not work, but worry, fretfulness, friction,--these are our foes in
America. You should not go here and there, making prominent either your
bad manners or a gloomy face. Who has a right to rob other people of
their happiness? "Do not," says Emerson, "hang a dismal picture on your
wall; and do not deal with sables and glooms in your conversation."

If you are not at the moment cheerful,--look, speak, act, as if you
were. "You know I had no money, I had nothing to give but myself," said
a woman who had great sorrows to bear, but who bore them cheerfully. "I
formed a resolution never to sadden any one else with my troubles. I
have laughed and told jokes when I could have wept. I have always smiled
in the face of every misfortune. I have tried never to let any one go
from my presence without a happy word or a bright thought to carry away.
And happiness makes happiness. I myself am happier than I should have
been had I sat down and bemoaned my fate."

"'T is easy enough to be pleasant,
When life flows along like a song;
But the man worth while is the one who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong;
For the test of the heart is trouble,
And it always comes with the years;
And the smile that is worth the praise of the earth