It would be quite safe to
assume that out of the first five hundred faces which he sees there will
not be ten wearing a smile, and not fifty, all told, looking as if they
ever could smile. If this statement sounds extravagant to any man, let him
try the experiment, for one week, of noting down, in his walks about town,
every face he sees which has a radiantly cheerful expression. The chances
are that at the end of his seven days he will not have entered seven faces
in his note-book without being aware at the moment of some conscientious
difficulty in permitting himself to call them positively and unmistakably
cheerful.
The truth is, this wretched and joyless expression on the American face is
so common that we are hardened to seeing it, and look for nothing better.
Only when by chance some blessed, rollicking, sunshiny boy or girl or man
or woman flashes the beam of a laughing countenance into the level gloom
do we even know that we are in the dark. Witness the instant effect of
the entrance of such a person into an omnibus or a car.
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