The Chemawa American, February 01, 1913, Page 19, Image 19

THE
CHEM AW A
AM ERICAN
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that many of them did so by seizing and turning to account bits and
fragments of time, even odd minutes, just as most men who have be­
come rich did so by economizing their expenditures and saving petty
earnings which thoughtless men squander. One man, observing that
his wife always delayed ten to twelve minutes before she came down to
dinner, used his time in writing and at the end of fifteen years had
completed a book of three volumes which was held in high repute.
Another, a physician, committed to memory the whole of Homer’s
Iliad by using only the time spent in hurrying from one patient to
another. Matthew Hale did much of his literary writing while travel­
ing on horseback. Henry Kirke White learned Greek while walking
to and from a lawyer’s office. Lord Bacon’s fame is mainly due to
his works written in his leisure hours while England’s chancellor.
Lord Macaulay, in leisure moments, whether resting or walking for
exercise, had always a book in his hand.
Every one of us wastes every day from fifteen to twenty minutes in
bed, in loitering, or in idle talk. This time, if devoted to self-
improvement, would make an ignorant man wise in a fewr years. A con­
tinual dropping wears away the stone. The large buildings in our
cities were built by laying one brick at a time on others.
David Hume said that he would rather have a cheerful disposition,
inclined always to look at the bright side of things, than with a gloomy
mind to possess an estate of 10,000 pounds a year. Cheerfulness in an
indispensible condition of the very best work, and the most effective
work comes from the head and hand of him whose heart is glad. It
was Carlyle who, though a chronic growler, exclaimed, “ Give us, Oh,
give us the man who sings at his work;” or as John B. DeMott says,
“ ‘Tis better to whistle than whine; ’tis better to laugh than to cry.”
The soldier is hardly sensible to fatigue while he marches to music.
A cheerful man is a great blessing to society. He is a moral tonic to
all with whom he comes in contact. No matter how black the sky
he can see a gleam of sunshine in some part of it. He laughs at the
bitter, lets the crows do the croaking, and gives care to the winds.
A good many of our great philosophers, poets, and deep thinkers,
have not been cheerful men, but there are some exceptions. Jeremy
Taylor, when his house had been plundered, his family turned out of
doors, and his estate seized, wrote cheerfully that they had left him the
sun and moon, a loving wife and many friends to pity and relieve him,
and that they had not taken his merry countenance, his cheerful spirit
and his good conscience. Sidney Smith was all his life a memorable
example of cheerfulness. His sunny disposition did not forsake him
even in ill-health and old age and he wrrote to a friend just before he
died, “ I have gout, asthma, and several other maladies, but am other-