THE BOOK OF GOOD CHEER

"A Little Bundle of Cheery Thoughts."

Polly
From

Merres

Margaret.

1911

Christmas.

The Gospel of Good Cheer

I

'N the laughter of the litle brook
That runs its merry way,
From the mountain-sides of Yesterday
To the meadows of To-day;

The Book
of

Good Cheer

"A Little Bundle of Cheery Thoughts"

What Cheer!

greatest gift the can bestow, is the gift of "good

cheer." The ability to smile, to enjoy the laughter of others, to spread the contagion of happiness wherever we go, makes us not only a welcome guest, but an actual blessing. Robert Louis Stevenson said, "A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note," and added, "Their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted." "Robert Louis" himself knew the value of "good cheer," if any man ever did, for it supported him through forty years of indifferent fortunes and ill health; and when he came to go, he sang:

"Glad did I live, and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will."

We all have friends who seem to carry happiness with them wherever they go, as it were the fragrance of their own joyous lives, who seem never to lose faith, who can smile even in sorrow, whose very presence is a benediction.

I know of no Gospel that is so much needed by our modern selfish world as the Gospel of Good Cheer. We are so desperately intent on making a living that we forget to live, so wrapt up in our solemn vocations that we forget that we owe the world at least the courtesy of a smiling face and each other the inspiration of a cheery word.

It has been a keen delight to gather these "posies from other men's gardens," and tie them together with a single thought. Now that the bouquet is finished, with each flower tucked in its rightful place, the collection is offered you in the hope that you will find it indeed "A Little Bundle of Cheery