Page:The Daughters of England.djvu/159

148 The next point we have to take into account in the right government of temper, is the important truth, that habitual cheerfulness is a duty we owe to our friends and to society. We all have our little troubles, if we choose to brood over them, and even youth is not exempt; but the habit is easily acquired of setting them aside for the sake of others, of evincing a willingness to join in general conversation, to smile at what is generally entertaining, and even to seek out subjects for remark which are likely to interest and please. We have no more right to inflict our moodiness upon our friends, than we have to wear in their presence our soiled or cast-off clothes; and, certainly, the latter is the least insulting and disgraceful of the two.

A cheerful temper—not occasionally, but habitually cheerful—is a quality which no wise man would be willing to dispense with in choosing a wife. It is like a good fire in winter, diffusive and genial in its influence, and always approached with a confidence that it will comfort, and do us good. Attention to health is one great means of maintaining this excellence unimpaired, and attention to household affairs is another. The state of body which women call bilious, is most inimical to habitual cheerfulness; and that which girls call having nothing to do, but which I should call idleness, is equally so. In a former part of this chapter, I have strongly recommended exercise as the first rule for preserving health; but there is an exercise in domestic usefulness, which, without superseding that in the open air, is highly beneficial to the health, both of mind and body, inasmuch as it adds to other benefits, the happiest of all sensations, that of having rendered some assistance, or done some good.

How the daughters of England—those who have but few servants, or, perhaps, only one—can sit in their father's homes with folded hands, when any great domestic