"Oh!" you say, "everybody can do that." No, indeed. It sometimes takes us weeks at the School of Expression to secure that sympathetic modulation, and when it comes, what a change! Channels are opened that allow pent-up feeling a mode of expression; it is not alone the hand that is free, it is the student's whole being.

The hand is the flower of expression. The fingers are its petals.

And the human face: into how few does feeling flow and diffuse itself equally over every part!

Yes, the smile is universal, but what a ghastly, one-sided lot of smiles are found in the world!

How few, when they smile, smile with the whole countenance! Of course the diffusion of the smile into every feature cannot come from deliberation; that would only result in artificiality. We must smile with the entire face. To do this we must allow the face to smile. When the deliberative usurps the spontaneous, we have artificiality and affectation. When the spontaneous usurps the deliberative, we have chaos. Is there no way in which we can manipulate the face, strengthen internal emotion, open a channel for its outflow, until the whole face can be filled and moulded with this imaginative and emotional life?

If we begin early, can we not bring all the features of the face into greater unity? Can we not make them harmonious by manipulation with the fingers? Something of the kind can be done for I have seen it, but the greatest need is that the man be awakened and his emotion stimulated. We cannot produce the effect without the cause. Let man be simple. Let him look on the world in a natural, unaffected and sympathetic way,— the way any true human being should; if he per

ceives but one little streak of sunshine, then he will smile. The development of the smile, however, must go still farther. Wrong habits are a matter of acquirement. For example: there is everywhere danger of premature expression. Impulsiveness is not the same as spontaneity. The latter employs a co-ordination of man's primary faculties and powers. It employs reserve,-the co-ordination of emotions until they diffuse actively into all parts of the body.

What is spontaneity, and especially what is it in the smile?

One of the worst faults, and one of the earliest, is a kind of jerk of the body intended for a laugh. Not only does the laugh displace the smile but it is a sign of weakness, and the result is characteristic of all forced expression. The muscles are set into action and the whole body is jerked, or more frequently, given a series of jerks. A boy or girl gives up prematurely to the desire to be pleased, or share laughter with older people, with the result that there is a loud gush of breath, a contortion of the body and other abnormal actions.

Such an outward thrust of breath or cramp of the body is a sign of weakness. Such tendenciesand there are many of them too-should be corrected as early as possible. Here is the time to begin to develop character.

The smile must be easy, natural, simple. It must not be forced, not chaotic. Even children while full of joy must be trained to eliminate explosive laughter.

The smile must precede and support laughter. Support is one of the greatest laws of expression. It means that central action must justify one that is superficial; that primary action such as the smile

must support secondary actions such as laughter. All true laughter begins in a smile which must precede and support it.

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"You have in you there," says Emerson “a noisy, sensual savage, which you are to keep down, and turn all his strength to beauty. For example what a seneschal and detective is laughter! It seems to require several generations of education to train a squeaking or a shouting habit out of a man. Sometimes, when in almost all expressions the Choctaw and the slave have been worked out of him, a coarse nature still betrays itself in his contemptible squeals of joy. It is necessary for the purification of drawing-rooms that these entertaining explosions should be under strict control. Lord Chesterfield had early made this discovery, for he says, 'I am sure that since I had the use of my reason, no human being has ever heard me laugh.' I know that there go two to this game, and, in the presence of certain formidable wits, savage nature must sometimes rush out in some disorder."

Emerson and Chesterfield recognized the danger of vulgarity in laughter. It is the one act to which we are liable to give up, to prematurely and unreservedly abandon ourselves. Yet they possibly went too far.

Mr. Frank Sanborn tells a story of how he once went to walk with Emerson in the woods, and he tried to make him laugh. Beginning very quietly and composedly he endeavored to take him by surprise with the following story: A man came in at 4 o'clock in the morning. As he came in his wife cried out, "Why are you coming in so late as this? It is four o'clock." My dear," replied the man, “it is one o'clock." "It is four o'clock,

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the clock has just struck four," replied his wife. My dear," he answered, "it struck one, I heard it strike one repeatedly."

Emerson, taken by surprise at the last word, turned away from Mr. Sanborn and placed his hand over his mouth and came as near laughing as he ever did.

While the control of laughter, in transmuting it into a smile, is one of the greatest marks of culture yet the hearty laugh brings health and strength.

However, the laugh which is reserved and retained in the middle of the body, which is, so to speak, an internal laugh rather than an external, has a far better effect upon the health than the quick abandon and the open boisterous laugh.

One method of improving the laugh, accordingly, is to transform it into a smile, to transform it into an intense increase of the breathing and an inward intense activity.

Another point may be noted. The laugh to which we quickly abandon ourselves, is soon over, while the laugh which we reserve and control gives us a deeper laugh and stays longer.

Never allow anything to make us negative. Let us be always positive; let us keep in our hearts only positive emotions. What a change that would make in our lives!

Observe the effect of positive emotions upon life:

A scientist started a series of wonderful investigations which were unfortunately interrupted by lack of support for his great laboratory. He showed that negative emotions exercised a deleterious influence upon the metabolism in the cells of the human body, while joy, love, courage and

all the positive emotions stimulated all that goes towards normal functioning in all the organs of the body.

He took two women. One meditated for a month over all the bad things that had happened to her in her life; the other meditated over all the good things that had happened to her. One kept her thoughts negative; the other kept her thoughts positive.

At the first of the month a most careful examination was given in all vital conditions. At the close of the month another careful examination was given. One had decreased 18 per cent.; the other had increased 25 per cent. in all that made for health, strength and the enjoyment of life.

It is because the smile expresses positive emotion that it is so important to life. "Laugh and grow fat" is one of the oldest and truest of the proverbs. The smile expresses not only mental and moral health, but physical strength. Whatever we do, we should do cheerfully and with a smile. If a man walks with the exhilaration of the smile and with joy, he grows stronger and stronger. If he hangs his head, he expresses in his body a negative attitude; he grows weary after a few steps.

Primitive peoples smile imperfectly. Uncultivated people laugh but rarely smile. Their pleasure is often exploded at once into a jerky roar of laughter.

In the cultivated person, on the contrary, there is a slow, keen realization of the situation, and a deeper co-ordination of all the faculties of the mind and body, and the smile seems to radiate through the whole countenance. The presence of the smile is, therefore, a mark of refinement and culture.