In the story of Gwynplaine two things stand out supremely. The first is the power and significance of a smile that could not come off. The second is the supreme importance and sacredness of humanity. The smile that could not come off was written upon his countenance with a knife. Gwynplaine was the son of an English nobleman. Stolen when a baby by a band of wandering showmen, he was trained for exhibition. They operated upon his helpless baby features and shaped them into a perpetual grin. From that day forth, no matter what were the feelings within him or the outlook in the path ahead of him, he carried a laughing face. He had been fashioned into a curiosity, but in some ways a very wholesome kind of curiosity. Had the story of Gwynplaine never done more than to remind the world of the value of laughter, it would have served its time and purpose well. No generation can well get on without those who make it their business to keep the smiles alive on the faces of the people. The world may laugh at them and pass them by as clowns, but the ages will have to honor them for having kept weary hearts hopeful when everything seemed to be crumbling away beneath them. The place of the humorist in literature is sometimes placed at a discount, but not properly so. The maker of fun whose humor was clean and genuine is a benefactor of his age, not to say a minister of righteousness. The hand of Justice lays an unfading wreath of honor upon the grave of the man who has helped to keep the world glad. He has planted roses where otherwise there would have been only thorns. He has scattered beauty and light where otherwise the shadows would have been left to reign supreme. One of the chief points in the story of Gwynplaine, however, was the fact that his smile was permanent and unfading. It was written indelibly upon his features and could be affected by no tempest either of joy or pain. His soul might be weary and his courage dead, but the world could never find it out by looking at his face. However often he may have been a troubled man, through it all he was a laughing man. It is all well enough to smile when one is gay, but the real hero is the one who keeps on smiling after the world has turned blue before his gaze. Anyone can look happy when he _is_ happy, but only the unusual man can keep a merry countenance when hopes die, ties are sundered, dreams crash in shattered fragments, and the rich promises of life prove to have been empty mirages of vain expectation. The smile “that cannot come off” is the smile worth while. The happiest-faced woman I ever knew was one whose life story would cast a tremor of dread upon any company. She had faced her floods of sorrow, had shed her tears, and then had come off with the victory of an undying cheerfulness which never inflicted upon another the troubles which had been hers.