romoting and preserving such qualities than on the
possession of external wealth and external honor.

And of all these, the one which makes us the most directly happy is
a genial flow of good spirits; for this excellent quality is its own
immediate reward. The man who is cheerful and merry has always a
good reason for being so,--the fact, namely, that he is so. There is
nothing which, like this quality, can so completely replace the loss
of every other blessing. If you know anyone who is young, handsome,
rich and esteemed, and you want to know, further, if he is happy, ask,
Is he cheerful and genial?--and if he is, what does it matter whether
he is young or old, straight or humpbacked, poor or rich?--he is
happy. In my early days I once opened an old book and found these
words: _If you laugh a great deal, you are happy; if you cry a great
deal, you are unhappy_;--a very simple remark, no doubt; but just
because it is so simple I have never been able to forget it, even
though it is in the last degree a truism. So if cheerfulness knocks
at our door, we should throw it wide open, for it never comes
inopportunely; instead of that, we often make scruples about letting
it in. We want to be quite sure that we have every reason to be
contented; then we are afraid that cheerfulness of spirits may
interfere with serious reflections or weighty cares. Cheerfulness is a
direct and immediate gain,--the very coin, as it were, of happiness,
and not, like all else, merely a cheque upon the bank; for it alone
makes us immediately happy in the present moment, and that is the
highest blessing for beings like us, whose existence is but an
infinitesimal moment between two eternities. To secure and promote
this feeling of cheerfulness should be the supreme aim of all our
endeavors after happiness.

Now it is certain that nothing contributes so little to cheerfulness
as riches, or so much, as health. Is it not in the lower classes, the
so-called working classes, more especially those of them who live in
the country, that we see cheerful and contented faces? and is it
not amongst the rich, the upper classes, that we find faces full of
ill-humor and vexation? Consequently we should try as much as possible
to maintain a high degree of health; for cheerfulness is the very
flower of it. I need hardly say what one must do to be healthy--avoid
every kind of excess, all violent and unpleasant emotion, all mental
overstrain, take daily exercise in th