Forest City Courier, Sept. 23, 1940

Now that school has opened again, the sounds of children’s voices are heard everywhere. They pass by in groups each morning with books tucked under arms. They are storing up precious memories, and in years to come their school days will be among the reminiscences that they will best like to meditate on. On the first day of school it was interesting to watch the little tots in our neighborhood start out eagerly with clean shining faces, leaving mother for the first time to attend school. All of us know that the first school for every person is at mother’s knee, and, what they learn there tends toward the building of their future careers. Mother Goose stories, fairy tales, juvenile fiction etc. in my opinion are good reading for children. I remember when I was about 10 or 12 years old, I read Arabian Knights twice in succession. Each time the stories seemed new. Every normal child at heart is a realist, however, and while he is listening to tales of fairy kings and queens, he is probably wondering where they put their crowns when they go to bed. Every boy certainly loves an animal story, and the time he may be comparing it to the deeds, actions and intellect of his own dog or cat.

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If the colored woman who helps me is dusting our living room at 9:30 on Sunday morning, she is likely to prolong the task as she listens to “Wings over Jordan,” and I can’t blame her. In fact, I sometimes find something to do myself within the sound range of the radio so that I do not miss the hymns of this noted choir, composed of colored people. The unison of the voices is perfect, and the tones clearly blended, the result being a harmonious melody. I think our colored friends put their whole selves into their singing, and at the same time there seems to be an interweaving of their faith and their devotion to their religion, which they express best in song.

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Robert Lewis Stevenson has written many helpful things on “happiness,” and he had few things to make him happy, as far as material things go. I do not mean by this that it takes material things alone to make a person happy. Some of the happiest people I know have an optimistic outlook on life, which neither wealth nor worldly good can change. Stevenson had ill health. He also had a lonely childhood, yet he had a sympathetic understanding of child life and wrote lovely poems for children. Back to the subject of happiness. Two excerpts from his writings run like this; like there is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown to even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprises nobody as much as the benefactor. “Happiness, at least, is not solitary: it joys to communicate; it loves others, for it depends on them for its existence; it sanctions and encourages to all delights that are not unkind in themselves. The very name and appearance of a happy man breathes of good nature, and helps the rest of us to live.”

Reprinted with permission from The Daily Courier. Copyright owned by The Daily Courier.