--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 8 number: 2 published: 1904-12 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "Cheerfulness," *Improvement Era* 8, no. 2 (December 1904): 97.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0802unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0802unse start_page: 97 end_page: 97 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1904-12) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0802unse publication_year: 1904 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1904, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Cheerfulness CHEERFULNESS. There is nothing better established among physicians than that cheerfulness prolongs life, and also enriches and enlarges it. Wholesouled, joyous laughter is a powerful health tonic. "There is no one remotest corner or little inlet of the minute blood vessels of the human body," says an eminent physician, "that does not feel some wavelet from the convulsions occasioned by a good hearty laugh." Laughter stimulates the digestive process, accelerates the respiration, and gives a warm glow to the whole system. It brightens the eye, expands the chest, forces the poison out from the least-used lung cells, and fills them with life-giving oxygen, and tends to restore that exquisite poise or balance which we call health. It is said that Lycurgus set up the god of laughter in the Spartan eating halls. If there is anything the American people need to learn, it is to laugh at meals. There is no table-sauce like it. It is the great enemy of dyspepsia. Success.