Burton Hillis and Others on Whistling and Humming

Burton Hillis speaks of whistling as an outlet for the joy and peace that well in the heart. Moreover, he strongly believes that one who whistles cannot be harboring any meanness or malice deep in his heart. Whoever hears an angry person whistle?

Can we say the same of a girl who hums as she goes about her daily home chores? Or a man who, as he toils in the fields sings out a lusty merry tune?

What is the effect of the whistle on others who listen to him? The whistler passes on a message of good will and friendliness, and before long he, the listener, catches the spirit of joy and mirth.



Cheerfulness is something you should cultivate. With your heart full of the joy of living you help make the world a happy place in which to live. Henry Ward Beecher said: "A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs. He is jolted disagreeably by only pebble in the road."

George Elliot speaks of the futility of life that is not spent in making it less difficult for one another.

There is a need for the cultivation of cheerfulness. Try keeping a cheerful disposition and maintaining a calm unworried state of mind amidst adverse happenings and you will find yourself happily adjusted. What is more you will radiate a bright light around.

You maintain a cheerful disposition when, as you are bent over an unpleasant task for yourself or for someone who is unjustly and several critical, you keep toiling on with a smile and a will to succeed.

Cheerfulness does not mean boisterous laughter caused by dirty indecent stories. Vulgar jokes irritate rather than brighten your sensibility. Many stories in comic strips are not the kind that develop wholesome humor.

Try cultivating humor. Humor is the quality of action, speech, or writing which excites amusement. It means the faculty of seeing what is amusing. "Ask anyone knows and has experienced the lubricating effects of even a small joke in a household, humor has an element of juice. It keeps life from drying up, and gives to it living freshness and flavor."