herself to laugh heartily at the least provocation, and would retire to
her room and make merry by herself. She was soon in excellent health and
buoyant spirits; her home became a sunny, cheerful abode.

It was said, by one who knew this woman well, and who wrote an account
of the case for a popular magazine, that at first her husband and
children were amused at her, and while they respected her determination
because of the griefs she bore, they did not enter into the spirit of
the plan. "But after awhile," said this woman to me, with a smile, only
yesterday, "the funny part of the idea struck my husband, and he began
to laugh every time we spoke of it. And when he came home, he would ask
me if I had had my 'regular laughs;' and he would laugh when he asked
the question, and again when I answered it. My children, then very
young, thought 'mamma's notion very queer,' but they laughed at it just
the same. Gradually, my children told other children, and they told
their parents. My husband spoke of it to our friends, and I rarely met
one of them but he or she would laugh and ask me, 'How many of your
laughs have you had to-day?' Naturally, they laughed when they asked,
and of course that set me laughing. When I formed this apparently
strange habit I was weighed down with sorrow, and my rule simply lifted
me out of it. I had suffered the most acute indigestion; for years I
have not known what it is. Headaches were a daily dread; for over six
years I have not had a single pain in the head. My home seems different
to me, and I feel a thousand times more interest in its work. My husband
is a changed man. My children are called 'the girls who are always
laughing,' and, altogether, my rule has proved an inspiration which has
worked wonders."

The queen of fashion, however, says that we must never laugh out loud;
but since the same tyrannical mistress kills people by corsets, indulges