“But is this cheerfulness for the sole benefit of the one who smiles?  Not a bit of it.  We cannot do evil without harming someone; neither can we cultivate cheerfulness without proving a blessing to others.  Here, I want to draw for you the picture of a boy who doesn’t seem to have this happy disposition of which we have been speaking. [Draw the lines to complete Fig. 86.] Perhaps he looks this way most of the time—­it is a bad beginning.  We see him here, coming down the street; perhaps he will meet one of the other boys.  Ah, yes, here comes another boy; and this boy has a merry heart, if we are to judge from his facial expression. [Draw the second boy.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 86]

“We have no way of knowing what this second boy said to the first boy, but we can tell from his face that he has a merry heart.  And what about the first boy?  Ah, he, too, has caught it, for his face reflects the smile of the second boy. [Add line to change the facial expression of the first boy, completing Fig. 87.]

[Illustration:  Fig. 87]

“We refer again to the book of Proverbs, and there we find that ’a word spoken in due season, how good it is!’ It must have been such a word that the first boy spoke to the second.  ‘A word fitly spoken,’ we read again, ‘is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.’  But we must choose the right words to go along with the smile, and the greatest danger seems to be that we will say too much, for the same book of Proverbs says that ‘he that hath knowledge spareth his words.’  He knows how to choose and when to stop.  Let us remember that the smile counts for more than mere words.  The smile is a universal language understood everywhere on earth.  It is the badge of friendship, and that is the thing which the world craves.

“A friend of Haydn, the great composer, once asked him how it happened that his church music was so full of gladness, and Haydn replied, ’I cannot make it otherwise.  I write according to the thoughts I feel; when I think upon my God, my heart is so full of joy that the notes dance from my pen.’

“To the one who needs your smile there is nothing else in all the world, perhaps, that will prove so life-giving.  Many a despondent one has been thrilled with vital power, lifted, and ennobled by the knowledge that another heart beats with it in tenderness and sympathy.”

WHAT IS BEST? 
    —­Success
    —­Work

Success Means the Constant Employment of Our Best Faculties in the
Noblest of Service.

THE LESSON—­That true success does not depend so much upon what you get out of this world, as upon what you accomplish for others.

The magic word, “Success,” is before each one of us to inspire us to larger deeds; but let us not forget that many a rich man has made a great failure of life, while many a poor man has made a great success of it.  The talk deals with the subject in a commercial way, as an illustration of success in the truest sense.