Consideration is "catching," and the easiest way to accomplish one's own desires, in connection with others, is to suggest consideration by consideration. No one ever "lost a trick, or missed a meal," by being considerate; and simple, unaffected consideration has often been the means of adding great possessions to its own richness. "After you," will unravel a crowd quicker than any pushing to be first. Fearthought, and the selfishness growing out of it, are the origin of all lack of consideration for others; and contact with others, and the every-day amenities of life furnish constant opportunity for attacking one of the strongest expressions of the disease of fearthought by practice of altruistic consideration. _The first requisite of gentility is consideration._ * * * * * Happy Day! "Good morrow," "good day," "good morning," and "good evening," were originally intended to have the same significance as our opening salutation, but now they have generally become stale and mean no more than "how are y--" "how d'y" and other perfunctory greetings that are ridiculous when rendered with an inflection that resembles a grunt. Elsewhere it is related how "happy day" is used in some families to greet the morning. What humanity is suffering from is a restriction of affections, and an effusion of fears. People are afraid of being frank and therefore cultivate the sulks, suffer and become ill from the repression. If you cannot greet the morning and likewise every living thing and every inanimate thing that there is with "Happy Day," you had better take medicine for the trouble, for you are really ill. _Happy Day!_ * * * * * Forethought is Optimism. All good men are optimists. The contrastive definitions of "optimism," and "pessimism" and "content," as given by Rev. Dr. Newel Dwight Hillis in an address on optimism, which the author had the pleasure of hearing, are in themselves an epitome of good suggestion relative to the profitable attitude toward the past, the present and the future. Said Dr. Hillis, "The pessimist cries, 'all is ill, and nothing can be well'; the idle dreamer assumes that 'all is well,' but the optimist declares that 'all has not been ill, and all has not been well--all is not ill, and all is not well--but all _can be_ and therefore _shall be_ well.'" Appreciation of ever-present blessings--the sun, the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the mist, the constant changes in the aspect of nature, the love of friends, the hurdles that are met and cleared at a bound, and even the obstructions that Providence places in the _wrong road_, make them all seem to chant in chorus,--"No matter what has been; no matter what is; all _can be_ and _shall be_ well." _Optimism is life._ * * * * * Fearthought inspires Pessimism. Pessimism is a false prophet.