Santa Fe new Mexican. [volume] (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1898-1951, 1898-12-13

htltl " httNiltiltt do Olltll DO 1 dt, YOU
would see lots of people who look like
the ghost of melancholy just let loose
from the graveyard. Oh, the faces that
have grown so long. 1t is almost i'm
possible to measure them. Oh, the fur
rows that are plowed longitudinally
across so many cou%ntenances! Oh, the
mouths that have the corners both
turned down, not turned up! If by some
happy circumstance you can startle
those people into Il laugh, what a
change! 1t is like the sun bursting
through the clouds and covering the
landscape on a dark, chilly day. Give
me an honest Laughter" said Sir Walter
Scott, and he himself could laugh up
~roarously. Yes, give all of us people
who can speak a hearty Good morn
ing" when they come to the break
fast table, and people who can whistle
and keep their courage up when they
night. or through the still darker trials
of life. There is more religion. l tell
you, in a laugh than there is in a growl,
and more in a smile than there is in a
frown; and more in a shout than there
is in a howl. Solomon knew what he was
talking about when he said there is a
time to laugh.
l make no apology for selecting this
text or for introducing this subject into
the pulpit. Fol many of us, life is too
serious and too somber. There is far
more shade than there is sunshine.
There is too much night and not enough
day; too much bemoaning and COM
planning and not enough praising and
thanksgiving. And as Shakespeare
says, "The fault is in ourselves, and not
in our stars, hat we are underlings.'
We need not eat gooseberries and green
persimmons unless we want to do so.
Strawberries are just as easily cultiva-
ted, and they are far more palatable,
and they do not distort the face unto
all sorts of shapes. There is no good
reason Why any one of us should go
down beneath the burdens of life's cares
and disappointments and Affections.
| There is no good reason why life should
not have for you and me and every 9TH
| er person. as a counterbalancing bless
ing, a good measure of joy and mirth
| and cheer. Now I do not speak as n
| whose course has always been smooth.
l have not been moving all these years
of my life leisurely and comfortably
adown a pleasant stream whose either
bank was bordered with blooming
flowers and fragrant plans. All, no! I
have known hardship and struggle and
have felt the sting of adversely and
have had to fight my way amid I'M
friendly conditions. Before eleven
years of life had gone, l watched my
mother-that dearest, most apprecia-
tive friend-leave her home and her
four boys and mount upward to the
skies. In a far-distant state, I have
laid away beneath the green-sward, two
of the fairest little children that ever
frightened a home on earth and beck
oned toward a home above. And I
have seen my fondest hopes decay and
my best plans miscarry, because ILL
health beat me back and kept me from
achievement. | speak to you as one
| who has passed through like Affections
with yourselves. I know something of
the weight of your sorrow. something
of the sharpness of your pain,
thing of the keenness of your disap-
pointment. And still I say we cannot
afford not to cultivate the happy, joy
Gus side of life; we cannot afford not to
develop the mirthful, bouyanr. eXuber-
ant part of nature. There is "a time to
laugh There is need of laughter.
Good-nature is sometimes the gift of
God. There are people who are born
with it. They come into the world with
so large a supply of good cheer that it
keeps them going until they leave the
world and are ready for the eternal
good cheer of heaven. They begin life
like Whittier's BAREFOOT boy, with his
merry, whistled tunes" and his turn
ed-up pantaloons," with his ''out-
ward sunshine and inward joy" and
ever when old age has overtaken them.
they still know how to laugh and whis-
tie II rejoice. There is one thing in
the character of the negro that ought
to command everybody's respect, and
that is his disposition to be happy. /
do not believe there is another person
in the world who is able to make so
much out of his circumstances. He
may have very few of this worlds
goods and not more than half enough
to eat, but he is bound to get some real
Florida / saw negroes who had no
place to sleep but under the pine trees,
n no place to cook their meals but
the Goals of pine knots, and yet un-
questionably they were the happiest
people I met, singing at their work,
and We're singing when they had no
work. A writer in a Chicago paper re-
lates that, during a cold time in that |
city, when the thermometer was far be-
low zero, he passed along a street
where a number of workmen We're dig
ging a trench. There were several ma /
tionalties represented, and among them
one negro. The white men We're shiv-
ering and growing and cursing, and
were sullen. thinking only of their hard
lot. The negro would every now and
then throw down his pick and fling his
about him to start up the circula-
ton, and then go to his work again
as loud as his lungs would let
him. Such a disposition is better than
er it be possessed by a swarthy son of
Africa or the fairest and most beauti-
full Anglo-Saxon. There are worse
things in this world than a black skin.
Good mature, that Is not inherited,