The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1909-10-15
The Value of O Smile.

No matter what may be President
Taft's faults, his smile causes us to
forget them all.
Few of us realize the true worth
of good, wholesome laugh.
This old world would fly into the
bottomless pit if the human race
would be unlike Mr.. Taft for one
whole month. If every face we met
wore a frown; if every pair of lips
on earth uttered no words of cheer,
the desolation would be so deadly
before the last quarter of the pres
ent moon that the dead literally
would have to bury it's dead.
Medical scientists tell us that
there is something in the smile, or
the laugh, that releases to the over
worked organs the necessary juices
which rest them-which build them
anew.
The man who laughs excessively
never has dyspepsia. Travelling
men, as rule, are large and healthy
because they spend much time to-
gether, telling and laughing about
funny stories.
The man who kicks about the
weather, about the government,
about the town in which he lives,
about the victuals he has to eat, act
ually kicks himself into an untimely
grave. His self-inficted anguish
really fills his organs with poisons
that are detrimental to his physical
well being.
Once there lived a little girl who
became interested in church work.
She got the mistaken idea into her
sanity little head that, since there
was so much misery and suffering
in the world, it would be sin for
her to smile. She went about doing
good. However, at all times she
was sad and downcast In a few
short months she died. The minis
ter at her grave said she had become
an angel here, she had become so
good that God had taken her. He
dwelt on the much advanced belief
that when one reaches angelic per-
fection that one will be taken away
from this sinful world.
But this was not the trouble in
this particular case. The little saint
had neglected the God-given right to
smile-to see the joy, the beauty,
the gladness in this beautiful old
world. Deprived of this wholesome
food, her vital organs were unable
to throw off the poisons and she
died-she starved for the want of a
smile.
The man who smiles has the world
at his feet. People overlook his
faults because he is a jolly good
fellow.
The employer who meets his help
with smile, who tells them a funny
story which causes them to laugh,
has given them a nerve and brain
tonic on which they can do more
and better work and which will
create in them a respect for him
that nothing else can do.
The secret of President Taft's |
lies in his smile. He
laughed his way to the hearts of the
simple minded Filipinos, putting
down a rebellion that shot and shell |
never could have quelled.
presidency when his party was torn
with a dissention that would have
defeated a Lincoln, Blaine or a
Mckinley. But he smiled himself
to victory.
Now, when his party is all but
hopelessly divided on the tariff ques-
tion, he is smiling 1t into a firmly
cemented and nerfectlv harroonIo,,a
union.
If he lives, he will smile himself
into another four years in the White
House.
He is not a brilliant man, nor
does he possess many of the ele-
ments of greatness. He simply
knows how to smile, and there is
such wholesomeness in his smiles
that the people simply surrender
and enlist under his banner.
The Wahar 9tooIr NJ ~ A.