Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1898-09-12

chin in greeting is panied with
so little exertion that all day long and
every day, you might practice it with
out the least sem blance of fatigue. So
also the structure of the hand indicates
handshaking; the knuckles not made so
that the fingers can turn out, but SO
made that the fingers can turn in, as in
clasping hands, and the thumb divided
from and set aloof from the fingers, so
that while the fingers take your neigh
boris hand on one side, the thumb takes
it on the other and pressed together, all
the faculties of the hand give emphasis
to the salutation. Five sermons in every
healthy hand urge US to handshaking.
Besides this, every day when you
start out, Load yourself up with kind
thoughts, kind words, kind expressions
and kind greetings. When man or
woman does well, tell him SO, tell her
so. 1t you meet some one who is i'm
proved in health and it is demonstrated
in girth and color, say, How we'll you
look'' But if, on the other hand, I'M
der the wear and tear of life he appears
pale and exhausted, do not introduce
sanitary subjects, or say anything at
all about physical condition. In the
case of improved health, you have by
your words given another impulse to-
ward the robust and the jocund, while
in the case of the failing health you
have arrested the decline by your 81
lence, by which he concludes, eff I
were really so badly off, he would have
said something about it, We are all,
especially those of nervous tempera
ment, susceptible to kind words and
discouraging words. Form a conspiracy
against US, and let ten men meet US at
certain points on our way over to bust
ness and let each one say, Chow sick
you lookH' though we should start out
we'll, after meeting the first and hear
ing his depressing salute, we would be-
gin to examine our symptoms. After
meeting the second gloomy accosting,
we would conclude we did not feel
quite as we'll as usual After meeting
the third, our sensations would be
dreadful and after meeting the fourth,
unless we suspected a conspiracy, we
would go home and go to bed, and the
other six pessimists would be useless
surplus of encouragement.
Brightness Not Gloom.
My dear sir, my dear madam, what
do you mean by going about this world
with disheartenments? Is not the sup
ply of gloom and trouble and misfor-
tune enough to meet the demand with
out your running factory of pins and
spikes? Why should you plant black
and blue in the world when God so sell
dom plants them? Plenty of scarlet col
ors, plenty of yellow, plenty of green,
plenty of pink, but very seldom plant
black or blue. never saw black flow
er, and there's only here and there q
bluebell or violet, but the blue is for
the most part reserved for the sky, and
we have to look up to see that, and
when we look up no color can do US
harm. Why not plant along the paths
of others the brightnesses instead of the
glooms?
Do not prophesy misfortune. If you
must be prophet at all, be an Ezekiel
and not q jeremiah. In ancient times
prophets who foretold evil were doing
right, for they were divinely directed,
but the prophets of evil in our time are
generally false prophets. Some of our
weatherwise people prophesied we
would have a summer of unparalleled
heat. 1t has been very comfortable
summer. Last fall all the weather
prophets agreed in saying we should
have IL winter of extraordinary severity,
blizzard on the heels of blizzard. 1t
was the mildest winter I ever remember
to have passed. Indeed, the autumn
and the spring almost showed winter
out of the procession. Real troubles
have no heralds running ahead of their
sOmber chariots, and no one has any
authority in our time to announce their
coming. Load yourself up with hope
full words and deeds. The hymn once
sung in our churches is unfit to be
sung, for it says:
We should suspect sc1ne danger near
Where we possess delight.
In other words, manage to keep mis-
cradle all the time. The old song sung
at the pianos quarter of a century ago
was right, "Kind words can never die. 2"
Such kind words have their nests in
kind hearts, and when they are Matched
out and take wing they circle round in
flights that never cease, and sportsman's
gun cannot shoot them, and storms can
not ruff1e their wings, and when they
cease flight in these lower skies of
earth they sweep around amid the high
er attitudes of heaven. At Baltimore I
talked into a photograph. The cylin-
der containing the words was sent on
to Washington, and the next day that
cylinder from another photographic in
strument, when turned, gave back to
me the very words I had uttered the
day before and with the same intona-
tions. Scold into monograph, and it
will scold back. Pour mild words into
monograph, and it will return the
gentleness. Society and the world and
the church are monographs. Give them
acerbity and rough treatment, and acer-