OCR Text |
Show Dorothy Dix Talks CHEERFULNESS By DOROTHY DIX. the WorM's Highest Paid Woman Writer. j Did you think of chrerfulr.iv s as a financial asset something thai is money in your pocket, and that is legal tender for food and drink and lodging and clothes, and with which you eun buy IUCC6S8 and popill.u it;. . and all tho good things of life? Well, It Is. Wo arc in the wa ol considering cheerfulness a spiritual quality, the glow that emanates from happiness and well being It is that, and more It is (ho first aid to getting there, and tht nu n and woman who wear the smile that won't eome oil tarry about with them a talisman that brings them sure good luck. Take two tuns of equal abJTlty, of equal character, of equal energy and1 ambition. Lol ODI Ol them have a bright sunny disposition and the other I one be glum ami moro.se, and grouchy, ! and In ttn ears' liuie the cheerful lad I will be so far ahead of Gloomy Gus I that he won't be even in telephoning! distance. For everybody will have helped the' cheerful DO and given him band up as he went alone,, and eerybody will have side-tracked the melanchoh one and kept out of his way as far a possible pos-sible Bhnployen like to have bright happy hxikinc employes around tin m. Cuctotnora Like to deal with Interested, smiling sales people. Business nu n enjoy doing business with Jolly men who have funny stories to tell and whose laugh is hung on a hair trigger. Optimists run the world. The pi - mis! who bu no faith Id God or man' who thinks that everything is rotten and that the universe is going to the dogs, never pull off a big deal. He chills enthusiasm, he paralyzes effort, he slays hope, and makes you feel that nothing is worth while, and every scheme a foredoomed failure even before be-fore he broaches his plan, and you instinctively in-stinctively say "no" to his proposition because his personality has wet blanketed blan-keted it to such an extent that it is no longer alluring. On the other hand the cheerful man can sell us fur overcoats to wear in the tropics, or orange groves in Maine, because under the magic of his smile everything seems right and feasible in this best of all good worlds As tor popularity, cheerfulness is the sesame that opens every door. It will make more friends for you than all the cardinal virtues, and carry you farther in society than brilliancy, or wit, or any other talent or grace. The friends that we grapple to us with hooks of steel are those whose coming is like the turning on of the light in a dark room, the men and women who bring us something of hope -ind cheer, and good will, and who leave us the happier even if we only see them for a moment The guests who are always welcome in our houses are the merry and the light hearted, those who can make a dinner party go to the tune of laughter and jest. No mutter how much we may esteem our friends and r latives for their noble no-ble characters none of us want them ! about if they are perpetually se.pni on our breasts, and telling us the sad, i sad stories of their lives and deluging us with their woes. We have sorrows enough of our own without superimposing superim-posing other peoples troubles upon tin in. Also, while we revere the martyr, none of us enjoy taking a vicarious I part in his martvrdom. and that is ' why we refrain from giving the nielan-choly nielan-choly youth a job in our office where we will have to observe his mournful coutnenanct and listen to his lamcnta tions every day. and why we install in the place a jovial lad who whistles at ( his work and looks up with a grin whenever you speak to him. Also It I is why we invite chirpy Cousin Sally, who doesn't need It, to spend the sum-! ; mer with us instead of Aunt Jeremiah I Jane who does need i but who would! I pickle the whole household in her! tears. I And the one way to make matrimony a success and a paying investment is) to be cheerful about it. There are a I million things in married life that are j comedy or tragedy, and over which; you must either laugh or cry, and it's according to the way you take them) whether you get the sweet or the bitter bit-ter out of the holy estate. All men and women are fallible. They make mistakes. No husband .or I wife ever comes up to what the party I of the other part had imagined him or her to be. but if a married couple I have the sense to take the disappoint-'ments disappoint-'ments of matrimony good humoredly, j If they laugh at each other's little pe-1 culiariUcs instead of quarreling over j them, all goes well and they have I solved tho problem of how to be hap-1 py though married. You never hear of a man growing I tired of a cheerful wife, no matter how , grizzled her hair gets nor what her I i waist measure. Nor do you ever see a woman out on a still hunt for an affinity af-finity who understands her, If she is married to a cheerful man whose pres-ence pres-ence is like sunshine in the home. Nor do you ever hear of children running off from a cheerful home. It is the dyspeptic, nervous, gloomy, pessimistic pes-simistic husbands and wives that fill the divorce courts. It is from the dar: and bleak and gloomy homes that chil-1 dren escape as soon as they possibly can. But how can one achieve this cheerfulness cheer-fulness in a world of w oe. some may ! ask By keeping the brae attitude towards to-wards life. By refusing to talk of your own t roubles, and by resolutely cultivating culti-vating cheerfulness as assiduously as we now do gloom. It can be done. And it pays. |