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6 Worth Woman's While Joy, the Grace We Say to God. There is no habit like that of just being glad. It is a habit, just as worrying is, or repining, or being dissatisfied, and we have such infinite oppor tunity to cultivate it; there are such countless things to incite to gladness. And the best of all is the older we grow the more there are. Youth is a bright and beautiful time, but maturity brings a realization that youth can only grow to; perception grows with age, and vision becomes farther reaching and truer; it takes in more ob jects. The more we cultivate the habit of being glad, the more we see to be glad for, and so years, in stead of bringing dullness and disappointment, as some imagine, are fruitful of a greater store than ever youth comprehended. If this is not the case it is because the gracious and generous opportunity afforded all alike has been neglected; the eyes have been trained to lin ger on the shadows rather than the bright spots of life’s picture, and with continual giving up to the dark and unwholesome, mind and heart have become warped and narrow, and chill and unhealthy like a tenement where no sun has been allowed to penetrate. One of the saddest experiences we ever had was in meeting with an old woman who knew no joy. She was a lone creature bereft of husband and children, and home with all its blessed sanctity, its privileges and its duties, its joys and its sorrow’s. We saw her in the home provided by the kindness of a friendly and sympathizing world; and grateful in our own heart that helpless age was so gener ously cared for, we expressed our gratification, remarking on the comfort of her pleasant sur roundings, and the brightness and goodness of the world, seeking to divert her from what seemed an habitual gloom. Here she was rescued from want and cruel anx iety. all the necessaries of life provided without so much as a thought on her part, a comfortable, sunshiny room, quiet, and books and papers to read —yet this was what she said: “I love to be sad. What have I got to be glad about?” What, indeed, if she counted all those blessings for naught! And she was not decrepit, either; she had fair health, and intellect to enjoy; if only she had had the habit to be glad. But plainly this habit had not been hers, and now when she had come to age and misfortune, she looked only on what was lost, not on the comfort that was provid ed and the goodness that prompted it. She seemed to forget what she had been saved from, and in sisted that she had nothing to be glad for! We have never remembered this poor lady since without a sense of sadness and depression. How’ different the thought of tw’o little neigh bors w T e have! One, a tiny mite of a girl, is a veritable ray of sunshine. Her sunny little heart gleams forth constantly in smiles that wait not to he called forth; they are always there. The glad dest little soul in the world, she is simply happy to be living, scattering sunshine as she runs about on her tiny feet, or pats them upon the floor for very joy as she sits in her little chair. Our other little neighbor is a singer. Just any time or anywhere she breaks forth into the mer riest little impromptu snatches that float across to us where we sit on our porch. So cheerful, so spontaneous and contagious that involuntarily we laugh aloud and say, “Listen to little Martha!” She is so jolly, so w’holesome, we are glad she lives by us. These dear bits of children have the un conscious habit of being glad, and what a beautiful habit it is! And how blessed it will make life to them and to others if it grows with their growth! Why shouldn’t w’e cultivate joy in all the things about us, just as we do the aspiration after what is good and lovely, or the attitude of charity to ward the weak and erring? We were meant o The Golden Age for December 6, 1906. By FLORENCE L. TUCKER, be glad; it w*as for this that the world was made so beautiful, and it is thus that we realize life’s best and happiest. “So take joy home, And make a place in thy great heart for her, and give her time to grow and cherish her. Then will she come and oft will sing to thee. When thou art working in the furrows; aye; Or weeding in the sacred hour of dawn, It is a comely fashion to be glad— Joy is the grace we say to God.” He who loses his conscience has nothing left that is worth keeping.—lzaak Walton. Surround Youth With Books. The habit of holding the mind steadily and per sistently to the thought in a good book not only increases the power of concentration, but also im proves the quality of the mind. Inspiring reading is that in which life-building words abound—for words are things which uncon sciously enrich character. The image of each help ful word held in the mind leaves its impress, its autograph, so to speak, there, and continually re produces itself in uplifting thoughts. If our homes were furnished with more charac ter-building books, and less bric-a-brac and costly furniture, our children would get a much better start in life. To bring a child up in an atmosphere of books, to surround him with the works of great minds from his infancy, and lead him gradually to ar appreciation of the works of the intellectual giants of the race, is equal to a liberal education. The boy or girl so nurtured will have been given the best means of acquiring a mentality of the very highest order.—Selected. The One Who Has a Song. Bv NIXON WATERMAN. The cloud-maker says it is going to storm, And .we’re sure to have awful weather—• Just terribly cold or wet or warm, Or, maybe, all three together; But. while his spirit is overcast With the gloom of his dull repining, The one with a smile comes smiling past, And, lo! the sun is shining. The cloud-maker tells us the world is wrong, And is bound in an evil fetter, But the blue-sky man comes bringing a song Os hope that shall make it better; And the toilers, hearing his voice behold The sign of a glad tomorrow, Whose hands are heaped with the purest gold Os which each heart may borrow. Mistaken Economy. A reasonable economy is commendable. But there is a hopeless, chronic, grinding economy that is an insult to God and death to all ambition and achievement. There was a woman who prided herself upon hav ing kept one paper of pins for five years, and never having used any others. Think of the wasted vitality and nerve force employed in keeping track of those bits of brass—of replacing them in the paper, of guarding them in the toilet! The same amount of thought and power expended wisely would have established pin factories throughout the United States. I knew a man who passed hours straightening the pins he found on the floor. The women of his household could always obtain a pin from the lapel of his coat when in need of one. but his daughter, who was not at all economical in her use of pins, was obliged to buy him the coat in which he stuck the pins! He was one of the world’s failures. “Luck is against me,” he said. He never deemed it his own mind which produced the conditions, but fate How could success come to a man who kept his mental forces down in the dust looking for pins to straighten?—Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Self Control the Secret of Youth. The man or woman who lacks control cannot ex pect to carry the freshness of youth into mature life. As a rule, the wrinkles which appear on the face are the expression of soul or mental wrinkles. ■The twist, the friction, in its first form, exists back of the face. Wrinkles are results, not causes. Even one who is not habitually petulant or irritable, but occasionally loses self-control, is sure, sooner or later, to find these dread enemies stamped indelibly on brow and cheek. The face is the parchment upon which it writ ten the history of our lives, not that which we would wish the world to read, but none the less is it the record of our hopes and fears, our aspira tions and ideals. Our discouragements, our vices, our virtues, are all faithfully chiseled where he who runs may read. It is rather remarkable that the character should not be portrayed upon any other part of the body so unmistakably as on the face. The skin elsewhere will remain, even late in life, fair and smooth, when the face is marred with deep, ugly wrinkles. It is the map of life, whereon character stamps itself so truthfully that there is no getting away from the story it tells. There is no dodging this record. No matter how -we may try to cover it up, it will be a never-failing signboard showing which way the real man or woman has gone, which of life’s crossings has been taken. The face cannot betray the years until the nfind has given its consent. The mind is the sculptor. The face bears the traces of the mallet and chisel it wields. Thoughts are forces, mighty forces, and, if the mind holds youthful pictures, retains the freshness, the receptiveness, the simplicity of youth, the face, as a rule, will not betray age. Principle never grows old; no one would think of the rules of the multiplication table becoming aged; and when the mind once grasps the real se cret of being—that individuals are fashioned in the image of their Maker, and that it is possible to carry youth into the teens of their second century, if they would erase from their minds, early in life, the belief that they must grow old because others do, that they must become useless and helpless in proportion as they advance in years, the abject ter ioi with which the thought of old age inspires some people would soon vanish. Mind is the master, the dictator of what shall be recorded in the features or manner; and if men and women would constantly hold pure thoughts and high ideals, refusing to entertain the common ideas of age, the face, even late in life, would respond with the freshness and smoothness of youth. Selected. “Until self passes out of sight and becomes merged in the harmony of universal life, a man’s or a woman’s chances of happiness are not worth considering. To think continually of how we feel, how we look, how others regard us, whether we receive our proper share of deference and at/en tion, whether this one slighted, or that one looked down upon us, is to be too small to recognize the tiue grandeur of manhood or womanhood. The kingdom of the soul should be too large to harbor such petty thoughts. The ruler of that kingdom should be too sensible of the height on which, he stands to feel that any power outside of himself can hurt or belittle pr humiliate him.”