Cheerfulness

Content

• A Foreword

• What Vanderbilt Paid For Twelve Laughs

• The Laugh Cure

• A Cheap Medicine

• Why Don't You Laugh?

• The Cure for Americanitis

• A Worrying Woman

• Our Hawaiian Paradise

• A Weather Breeder

• "What is an Optimist"

• Living up Thanksgiving Avenue

• Oiling Your Business Machinery

• Singing at Your Work

• Good Humour

• "Le Diable Est Mort"

• Taking your Fun Every Day as you do your Work

• Unworked Joy Mines

• The Queen of the World

• Finding What You Do Not Seek

• Doing Good by Stealth, and Having It Found Out By Accident

• His Head in a Hole

• "Phillips Brooks"

• "Looking Pleasant" - Something To Be Worked From The Inside

• Worth Five Hundred Dollars

• The "Don't Worry" Society

• A Pleasure Book

• The Sunshine-Man

A Foreword

            The soul-consuming and friction-wearing tendency of this burring, grasping, competing age is the excuse for this booklet. Is it not an absolute necessity to get rid of all irritants, of everything which worries and frets, and which brings discord into so many lives? Cheerfulness has a wonderful lubricating power. It lengthens the life of human machinery, as lubricants lengthen the life of inert machinery. Life's delicate bearings should not be carelessly ground away for mere lack of oil. What is needed is a habit of cheerfulness, to enjoy every day as we go along; not to fret and stew all the week, and then expect to make up for it Sunday or on some holiday. It is not a question of mirth so much as of cheerfulness; not alone that which accompanies laughter, but serenity, - a calm, sweet soul-contentment and inward peace. Are there not multitudes of people, who have the "blues," who yet wish well to their neighbours? They would say kind words and make the world happier - but they have not the time." To lead them to look on the sunny side of things, and to take a little time every day to speak pleasant words, is the message of the hour. 

THE AUTHOR  

[I got this small booklet from a burmese friend. It was already fallen apart and darkened from the Asien clima and I decided to digitalise it and keep it before it was completely lost. Unfortunately the first and last pages have been missing and the name of the Publisher and Author could not be found. WG]

What Vanderbilt Paid For Twelve Laughs

William K. Vanderbilt, when he visited Constantinople, one day invited Coquelin the elder, so celebrated for his powers as a mimic, who happened to be in the city at the time, to give a private recital on board his yacht, lying in the Bosphorus. Coquelin spoke three of his monologues. A few days afterwards Coquelin received the following memorandum from the Millionaire:

            "You have brought tears to our eyes and laughter to our hearts. Since all philosophers are agreed that laughing is preferable to weeping, your account with me stands thus:

            "For tears, six times      ...         $    600

            "For laughter, twelve times ...    $ 2,400

                                                            $ 3,000

            "Kindly acknowledge receipt of enclosed check."

            "I find nonsense singularly refreshing," said Talleyrand. There is good philosophy in the saying' "Laugh and grow fat." If everybody knew the power of laughter as a health tonic and life prolonged the tinge of sadness which now clouds the American face would largely disappear, and many physicians would find their occupation gone.

            The power of laughter was given us to serve a wise purpose in our economy. It is Nature's device for exercising the internal organs and giving us pleasure at the same time.

            Laughter begins in the lungs and diaphragm setting the liver, stomach, and other internal organs into a quick, jelly-like vibration, which gives a pleasant sensation and exercise, almost equal to that of horseback riding. During digestion, the movements of the stomach are similar to churning. Every time you take a full breath, or when you laugh well, the diaphragm descend and gives the stomach an extra squeeze and shakes it. Frequent laughing sets the stomach to dancing, hurrying up the digestive process. The heart beats faster, and sends the blood bounding through the body. "There is not," says Dr. Green, "one remotest corner or little inlet of the minute blood-vessels of the human body that does not feel some vibration from the convulsions occasioned by a good hearty laugh." In medical terms, it stimulates the vasomotor centres, and the spasmodic contraction of the blood vessels causes the blood to flow quickly. Laughter accelerates the respiration, and gives warmth and glow to the whole system. It brightens the eye, increases the perspiration, expands the chest, forces the poisoned air from the least used lung cells, and tends to restore that exquisite poise or balance which we call health, which results from the harmonious action of all the functions of the body. This delicate poise, which may be destroyed by a sleepless night, a piece of bad news, by grief or anxiety, is often wholly restored by a good hearty laugh.

            "There is, therefore, sound sense in the caption, - "Cheerfulness as a Life Power," - relating as it does to the physical life, as well as the mental and moral; and what we may call