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Show VALUE OF A SMILE JJERE'S an incident' illustrating what a smile even a wooden smile can do for you. Ron M. Helmer, of the Manufacturers Life Insurance Co., ( Calgary, Canada, was riot the smiling type. He says that as he i f ! ft looks back now he knows that his face was habitually smooth, smile-less. , His curiosity was aroused one day by reading something about the value of a smile, j Sounded like a silly remark! But it stuck in his memory; stuck so hard and fast that he couldn't loosen it. Finally, just as a matter of curiosity and to prove that the fellow who D. Carnegie wrote that nonsense did so because he needed something to write about he decided to make a test. When he got down to his office the next morning and met the elevator starter face to face, he stretched his mouth and gave forth a wooden smile. The elevator man looked a bit surprised, sur-prised, but he responded with a smile which was a little less wooden for his mouth had been stretched into smiles before. But somehow that smile of Mr. Helmer's, wooden as it was, did something for him, made him feel a little bit lighter about the heart, and that lightness had an effect on him all day long. The next day he again smiled at the elevator starter, and at the telephone operator. Felt pretty good all day. He tried it on his associates; they smiled back at him, though some of them glanced at him suspiciously. It was interesting to watch the reactions of the different people he smiled at. He tried smiling at himself in the mirror as he shaved. This was easy; a man shaving himself is a humorous sight. But from that forced habit of smiling Mr. Helmer learned how to really smile, and he says it saved him from developing into a sour-puss and made him a friendly, almost jovial person. And now that his face knows the pathway to smiles, he really feels those smiles. He says to tell you to smile when troubles beset you. Force smiles if you must, but smile! Sooner or later the smiling habit is going to keep you out of a lot of trouble. |