Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

A 71 Apology for Idlers 1 2 3
The other day, a ragged, barefoot boy ran
down the street after a marble, with so jolly
an air that he set every one he passed into a
good humour ; one of these persons, who
had been delivered from more than usually
black thoughts, stopped the little fellow and
gave him some money with this remark :
" You see what sometimes comes of looking
pleased." If he had looked pleased before,
he had now to look both pleased and mysti-
fied. For my part, I justify this encourage-
ment of smiling rather than tearful children ;
I do not wish to pay for tears anywhere but
upon the stage ; but I am prepared to deal
largely in the opposite commodity. A happy
man or woman is a better thing to find than
a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating
focus of goodwill ; and their entrance into a
room is as though another candle had been
lighted. We need not care whether they
could prove the forty -seventh proposition ;
they do a better thing than that, they prac-
tically demonstrate the great Theorem of the
Liveableness of Life. Consequently, if a