bout twenty minutes of the most impassioned
scolding ever poured out in an editor's office, the angry man became
disgusted, and abruptly turned to walk out of the room. Then, for the
first time, Mr. Greeley quickly looked up, rose from his chair, and,
slapping the gentleman familiarly on his shoulder, in a pleasant tone of
voice said: "Don't go, friend; sit down, sit down, and free your mind;
it will do you good,--you will feel better for it. Besides, it helps me
to think what I am to write about. Don't go."

"One good hearty laugh," says Talmage, "is like a bomb-shell exploding
in the right place, and spleen and discontent like a gun that kicks over
the man shooting it off."

"Every one," says Lubbock, "likes a man who can enjoy a laugh at his own
expense,--and justly so, for it shows good humor and good sense. If you
laugh at yourself, other people will not laugh at you."

People differ very much in their sense of humor. As some are deaf to
certain sounds and blind to certain colors, so there are those who seem
deaf and blind to certain pleasures. What makes me laugh until I almost
go into convulsions moves them not at all.

Is it not worth while to make an effort to see the funny side of our
petty annoyances? How could the two boys but laugh, after they had
contended long over the possession of a box found by the wayside, when
they agreed to divide its contents, and found nothing in it?

The ability to get on with scolding, irritating people is a great art in
doing business. To preserve serenity amid petty trials is a happy gift.

A sunny temper is also conducive to health. A medical authority of
highest repute affirms that "excessive labor, exposure to wet and cold,
deprivation of sufficient quantities of necessary and wholesome food,
habitual bad lodging, sloth, and intemperance are all deadly enemies to
human life, but they are none of them so bad as violent and ungoverned
passions;" that men and women have frequently lived to an advanced age
in spite of these; but that instances are very rare in which people of
irascible tempers live to extreme old age.

Poultney Bigelow, in "Harper's Magazine," in relating the story of
Jameson's raid upon the Boers of South Africa, says that the triumphant
Boers fell on their knees, thanking God for their victory; and that they
prayed for their enemies, and treated their prisoners with the utmost
kindness. Our foreign missionary books relate similar anecdotes, it
being a