The darkness is filled with imaginary terrors. We people the corners with hobgoblins that do not exist, and that in our hearts we know could not exist. Little Bessie had for several nights cried out in terror after she had been put to bed, so that her mother was compelled to go to her. At first she would not say what had frightened her, but at last the story came out. “I was thinking how frightened I should be if there was a bogey-man in the closet and he should suddenly put his head out and make faces at me.” “But, child,” said her mother, “you know there is no such thing as a bogey-man, so he could not be in the closet, nor make faces at you.” “Yes, mother, I know that,” answered the child, slowly; “but, mother, _if_ there was a bogey-man, and he did get into my closet, and if he did put out his head and make faces at me, wouldn’t I be awfully frightened? Well, it’s _that_ that makes me scream.” And often the thing that makes us “scream” has no more existence in fact than Bessie’s bogey-man. We get to turning things over in our minds, dwelling upon dire possibilities until they become actual to us, and we get as much pain and suffering from them as we should if they were real. It would puzzle ourselves, if we gave the matter attention, to discover why we are more given to worrying than to rejoicing, if it is not that we misunderstand life and its purposes. Consider life just on its physical side, and we shall see, as the Creator saw when he looked upon it, that it is all very good. There are more sunny days in the year than stormy ones; there is more growing time than decaying time, for spring, summer, and autumn comprise three parts of the year, and growth continues through them all; the moon shines always somewhere, and “the stars come nightly to the sky.” The bright-colored blossoms show more than the somber-hued; more birds sing sweetly than croak harshly, and even the croak melts into the symphony as a needed note. The purely material world points to joy and gladness rather than to sorrow and repining. Then, when we come to man, we find that he has more strength than weakness, more health than sickness, more power than inability, else man had not survived the ages. Moreover, man must have more capacity for enjoyment than for sorrow, else he would abandon life in weariness, or at best he would forget how to laugh; the mere animal does not laugh, that is one of man’s accomplishments. Man has also more desire for knowledge than for ease, else he would never have penetrated into the secrets and mysteries of Nature; man’s strong aspirations surmount his groveling tendencies, else he had never come up out of savagery into the light and development of kinship with the high gods.