Every-day Cheerfulness

The hardest thing is to keep cheeiful under the little pin-pricks tliat come trom uncongenial surroundings, the very in3ignifícance of which adds to their power to' annoy, because they cannot be wrestled with and overeóme, as in the case of larger hurts. Somedisagreeablehabit in onetowhom you may owe respect and duty, and which is a constant irritation to your sense of fitness of things, may demand of you a greater moral torce to keep the spirit, serene, t ban au absolute wrong committed against you. In one case endurance is all that is possible; in the other, youmay sometimes rightfully iight.and there is a world of fOIIllOrt 111 CllC pUNCl jl chillón. People fret too inuch about trifles. Women find a sea of troubles in their housekeeping. They often put as much worry and anxiety into it loaf of bread, a pie, a cake, into the weekly washing and ironing as should eufiice tor Jiurch weightier matters. Suppose these things go wrong to-day,the to-morrows are coming, in which totry again, and the thing is not worth clouding your own spirit and those around you, injuringyourself and them physicylal- for the mind affects the bodyand for such a trifle. You who know how thoroughl y I believe in doing everything to be done as well as it can be will not understand what I have said to mean contentment with ill dóing, but only that when a thing is beyond repair waste no useless regi-ets over it and do no idle fretting. Strive for that serenity of spirit that will enabl you to make the best of all things. That means contentment in its best sense. There is a kind that permits people to sit down and fold their hands, in bland disregardof their own Uuties and the rights oi otners, if any exertion or self-denial are needed. Indulged in, it grows stronger, benumbing the faculties and dwarñiig the life. Those of you who have read Constance Fenimore Woolson's story ot "East Angels" in Harper's Monthly will, perhaps, recall her most vivid description of a Florida lagoon, where the trees that met above the dark, still waters were draped with flowering planta, giving out an odor which was overpowering to any one who floated beneath them, producing a gradual stupor that would end in death. That, to me, is a fitting type of the kind of contentment which steals away all ambition, all desire for action, all thought of the possibilitie.s every human being holds for good or ill, bnt is satistied simply to exist.