• Author: Unknown
• Editor: B-8266
• Newspaper: The Umpire volume V
• Page Number:
• Date: 9 11 1918
• Tags:
• advice

BLUE OR ROSE?

Just what tint does your life take to you? Are you of that happy clan who see life thru rose-colored spectacles, and meet the thunder and the sunshine witha smile? To whom fate can do nothing, secure as they are in the knowledge that time has it’s recompense for every evil, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the happy ending is certain to eventutate if you just keep on expecting it hard enough; or do you belong to the blue-nosed faction who can see only the muddy road, and never the brilliant sun that is shining overhead, and whose facial expression reminds one of a Scotchman’s while paying his Income Tax; who are certain always that the worst is going to come, and are generally out in the middle of the road looking, and waiting for it, and who can wonder at their being runover?

If you should be so foolish as to attach a steel rod to yourself, and then go out into a six-cylinder thunder-storm, what kind of a verdict do you think the Coroners Jury would bring in? Who loves trouble, and hugs misery to themselves as their dearest friend, and are only too ready to pass large throbbing chunks of the same on to their friends,and neighbors—mostly the latter, for a pessimist hasn’t any friends—usually find themselves with a plentiful supply on hand for such largess. But are they admired and loved for it? Well, if they were passing out small-pox germs they would be just about as popular. The average small boy has a deeper and truer affection for Castor Oil, than the average person has for these chronic disseminators of unhappiness.

It is the man who smiles wide-toothed and happily who holds the audience; the man who can laugh away his own and your troubles, and whose cheerfulness is so infectious that you return to your apartments, and partake of your afternoon tea, without ever noticing the absence of sweetening, such men as these are the salt of the earth, and the sugar of the E. S. P. Surely, if ever there was excuse for feeling blue, it would be in such a place, and such circumstances as this, and would be thought tobe excusable in us who are outcast, scorned, and set apart. The casual spectator would expect to find smiles as hard to find in this place as a real, old-fashioned, mother-made, pumpkin pie, but are they? Well, hardly. There’s as much happiness to the square inch behind these walls, as there is on the other side of them, and while we sing the ‘‘Prison Blues”’ we smile while singing, as if the whole darn thing was a joke on the public instead of on us. And we sometimes think we’re right. And furthermore, our smiling is real and not camouflage. We do our ‘‘bits’’ bravely, and smile, confident that the best, and not the worst, is yet to come, and that the day that is coming holds a wonderful promise for us all. A promise of new lives, new deeds, new ways; of a time when the ‘‘cops’” shall cease from troubling, and the ‘‘mouth-piece’’ be at rest, and we, the manlier, braver, no- bler, for our passing thru the fire, shall stand forth unashamed in the sight of men— still smiling.