The old-fashioned methods of kings having a clown to keep them and their court laughing during meal time was a profound piece of philosophy and wisdom, for the stomach's sake, if for no other reason. The folly of the clown caused laughter, promoted genial humor which increased the flow of all the digestive juices and thus contributed to good digestion and perfect assimilation. The uncheerful father or mother who sits down to the table like a thundercloud and suppresses the bright, happy exuberance of childhood ought to be taken down to the dentist and pumped full of laughing-gas until he or she would laugh for a week. I would make such people laugh until their sides ached and they had to go to bed to get over it, and every time a frown or gloomy look came over the face I would have somebody lift a warning finger (but also a laughing face) and threaten them with another week's dose of laughing-gas. "But," says the gloomy one, "life has gone wrong with me. How can I be cheerful when I am out of work and sick and have no friends?" Your case is hard, my friend. I recognize it with sympathy, but let me tell you this, that every grouchy look and word will make it harder for you to get work, and will put friendship further away from you. Even as a business proposition, it does not pay. _Make yourself laugh_ and be cheerful, whether you can be or not, for very few men are willing to surround themselves with those who appear to be gloomy, depressed and grouchy. Learn the lesson that it does no good to indulge in self-pity. Whatever the adverse circumstances of life may be, face them like a man. Years ago I had learned this lesson of refusal to pity myself, and I then wrote: "I want to radiate a spirit that refuses to pity itself for any of its woes, its afflictions, its misfortunes, its sorrows. There is no weakness so weak as the weakness of self-pity; there is nothing so spiritually debilitating as to brood over one's own sorrows. It is a kind of melancholy selfishness; it neither helps one's self nor others; it is depressing to all concerned. I happened to read to-day in a popular novel a sentence that most truthfully expresses what I believe upon this subject: 'The most absolutely selfish thing in the world is to give way to depression, to think of one's troubles at all, except of how to overcome them. I spend many delightful hours thinking of the pleasant and beautiful things of life. I decline to waste a single second even in considering the ugly ones.' "It is just as easy to form a habit of dwelling upon the sweet and good and beautiful and happy things of life as upon the bitter and evil and ugly and unhappy things. Brooding enlarges whatever it exercises itself upon, whether it be good or evil, joy or woe. So brood on the good things, cast out the others, and so live that you radiate this joy and determination not to recognize the evil and unpleasant things.