It was N. P. Willis, I think, who added to the beatitudes—­“Blessed are the joy-makers.”  “And this is why all the world loves little children, who are always ready to have ’a sunshine party,’—­little children bubbling over with fun, as a bobolink with song.

“How well we remember it all!—­the long gone years of our own childhood, and the households of joyous children we have known in later years.  Joy-makers are the children still,—­some of them in unending scenes of light.  I saw but yesterday this epitaph at Mount Auburn,—­’She was so pleasant’:  sunny-hearted in life, and now alive forever more in light supernal.

“How can we then but rejoice with joy unspeakable, as the children of immortality; living habitually above the gloom and damps of earth, and leading lives of ministration; bestowing everywhere sweetness and light,—­radiating upon the earth something of the beauty of the unseen world.”

What is a sunny temper but “a talisman more powerful than wealth, more precious than rubies”?  What is it but “an aroma whose fragrance fills the air with the odors of Paradise”?

“I am so full of happiness,” said a little child, “that I could not be any happier unless I could grow.”  And she bade “Good morning” to her sweet singing bird, and “Good morning” to the sun; then she asked her mother’s permission, and softly, reverently, gladly bade “Good morning to God,”—­and why should she not?

Was it not Goethe who represented a journey that followed the sunshine round the world, forever bathed in light?  And Longfellow sang: 

    “’T is always morning somewhere; and above
    The awakening continents, from shore to shore,
    Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.”

    “The darkness past, we mount the radiant skies,
    And changeless day is ours; we hear the songs
    Of higher spheres, the light divine our eyes
    Behold and sunlight robes of countless throngs
    Who dwell in light; we seek, with joyous quest,
    God’s service sweet to wipe all tears away,
    And list we every hour, with eager zest,
    For high command to toils that God has blest: 
    So fill we full our endless sunshine day.”