Humor And Its Uses

"Hnmor is the very sunshine of the world, " writes Carrie E. Garrett in The Womau's Home Oompanion. "Hardly any other siugle gift will go so far to refresh and inspire one in everyday life and keep the heart still young. It steals merrily across the workaday world, animating the drearest uionotony and findiug place in the most hopeless destiny. Such a gay traveliug companion is humor for the pilgrimage of life. "The woman with a sense of humor has a safeguard against emiui, against folly and against despair. Shecannever be dull so loug as the comedy of life is being played before her eyes. With a keen sense of the ridiculous she is not likely to 'niake a fooi of herself,' and she will never bo hopelessly unhappy, for she will flnd in the most adverse f ate somethiiig still to laugh at, -and af ter all laughter is your true alchemist. However it may be with the unmusicai person, surely the snrly individual who cannot laugh spon taueously on occasions is 'fit for treasons, strategerus and spoils. ' "But this blessed gift of humor should be used to lift the shadows of life, not to deepen them. A joke which causes another a pang of humiliation or makes Bome sensitive heartache is not only a cruel sort of amusement, but it is also a very expensive indulgence. For just a moment's gratification at having made a 'hit' the 'funny woman' may forevef lose a friend and may even arouse a very genuine spirit of enmity. We learn to forgive and mayhap forget many injuries in life's troubled journey, but perhaps among the wounds that rankle longest in the humas heart are those which are made 'only in f uu. ' "